Butter and the Nut

Today is my first real day off in probably about a month. I was looking forward to a morning with toast, coffee and blogging in my pjs on the couch. Ahhh, relaxation a-go-go.


I woke up at about 9.30, got the coffee started, got the toast toasting, booted up the computer.  Then I went to get the butter and apricot jam so I'd be ready when the toaster popped...

You can imagine my irritation when I found this:

WT eff

Cue bitch mode.  I went completely ape sh*t.  Call it hormones, call it what you will, but I pretty much flipped my lid.

All I wanted was toast with butter and jam, but evidently I would only be having toast with...jam. Everybody knows that toast is NOT the same without the butter BEFORE the jam! My entire morning was ruined.  I yelled at Copain for his new technique in hiding his consumption of bad foods - and then I yelled at him again for his Aveyronnais habit of saving minuscule amounts of leftovers.

He tried to show me that I was wrong, that there was tons of butter leftover for my toast! As he sat there scraping the butter out of the container, I just yelled louder.  Then I switched into French to really drive it home.  Then he started doing the French souffle** to show how frustrated he was with me - and then he called me a crazy person and retreated to the bedroom.

As I gave him the silent treatment while eating my jam toast, I did feel like maybe I had slightly over-reacted. But it was THE ONE thing I really wanted this morning. And it was the third time he had left an empty container of something that I had just happened to want in the past two weeks (il n'a pas de chance...)


When I was done with the toast he came back into the war zone and said that he was sorry that he hadn't told me we were out of butter while I was buying groceries yesterday but that perhaps I went a little nuts about it.  And this my friends, is where Copain is a much better person than I could ever be, because he actually says he's sorry and tries to make peace.  I, on the other hand, boude (pout) and fight my reasoning until the bitter end. I hate to lose. Copain knows this about me and knows that if he doesn't come to me first, we will probably spend the day mad at each other.

Over the past (almost) seven years I've tried to learn from him, but it's hard.  I'm not good at admitting when I'm wrong or that butter is just not that big a deal- because by principle, I just can't let it go.  So, while I'm still feeling pissy that my toast was not parfait, Copain wins for being the bigger, butter person...et merde, I'm just the nut.


**The French Souffle - the French souffle is an art form practiced by all Frenchies.  In English we could translate this an "an exasperated sigh" but with higher intensity and with the mouth opened only slightly. The mouth position allows for the "horse noise" that comes when you push air out of your mouth with force. The souffle can be used in times of high annoyance, general irritation and is de rigeur at the Prefecture de Police, the mairie (mayor's) and in the presence of any other French fonctionnaire  (civil servant) who takes 50 times longer to do their job than anyone else in the country.

Copain-isms

Being in a bi-cultural, bi-lingual relationship has its downsides - misunderstandings followed by exasperating  in-depth explanations are often de rigeur. After almost seven years of vie commune Copain and I **mostly** have it figured out.  But we still experience THE GREAT DIVIDE - topics that we will never agree on due to our very different upbringings and cultural values.

If you ever spend time with us you will probably hear us at some point or another fighting over tipping, standing in line (as opposed to cutting in line) and my love of snacking outside of the three square French meals (this is when I like to remind him that he recently finished an entire jar of Nutella all by himself - I found the empty jar, hidden, under the sink - busted!)

Despite our constant bickering over topics covered in THE GREAT DIVIDE, life with Copain has its wonderfully hilarious, can't be beat moments.  These are the Copain-isms that I have come to realize must be documented lest they be lost in the depths of my memory. Also, as his English and my French improve, I imagine that the isms will occur less and less which frankly is just upsetting. That's how much I love them.

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Our friends recently had a new adorable baby boy named S.  On the way to visit for the very first time we were talking about where the baby must sleep since our friends already have a three-year-old and have only a two-bedroom apartment (les pauvres - on habite dans 29m2!!).

Doesn't the baby have a coffin?, Copain asked me.

A what?!

A coffin - you know, where the baby sleeps.

Ummm, I think you mean a crib - unless the baby has died and needs a cercueil (the French word for coffin). 

Realizing his mistake we both burst out laughing. But I didn't really get the faux amis (literally translated as fake friends aka: a French word that sounds very similar to an English word in pronunciation, but in fact, has a different meaning altogether) until I had relayed the story to my French friend E.  She kindly explained to me that in France, babies sleep in a couffin - a little baby basket - when they are first born.  


Ah ha! Je comprends! 


So no, Copain was not wishing death on newborn little S, he just had a faux amis moment, rien de grave.  Coffin / Couffin  -  Potato/ Potahto right?