Bon Temps!

I grew up in Southern Louisiana. I am what is considered a Cajun, which means that my ancestors were once Acadian's who were exiled from Canada. My dad's side of the family only spoke French, just like everyone's family who lived in our small town. When my dad started going to school, all the teachers spoke French too. Then, when my dad was 10, the schools decided that students could no longer speak French in schools. The problem was, they didn't know how to speak English. Their parents did not speak English either. Did this deter the schools from slowly integrating English into their studies while still teaching them in French until the crossover could be made? No. They beat any student who spoke French at school. French was "bad". So my dad and his younger brothers and sister learned the language, while their parents only learned a little bit over the next 40 years. My dad's grandparents never learned English, although the both of them were still living, until I turned 30.

I remember being a little girl and my dad would tell us something in French sometimes, then have to repeat himself in English. We never learned French because my father learned that it was "bad" and in turn, he did not want his children learning the "bad" language. As an adult, I feel such a tremendous loss of my heritage and knowing that it has taken only one generation to kill the Cajun French language. My dad is only 58. He and his friends still speak French to each other but their children can only stand there and nod when we hear a familiar word here and there.

I guess this was all just on my mind this morning as I was fixing myself a cup of coffee and pouring in some milk and Splenda. And I just thought "Grandmere' used to make me cafe' au lait when I was a little girl". She used to make me what you'd call "coffee milk". It's more milk than coffee, with a lot of sugar. And I used to be able to sit at the table with the grownups who were drinking their coffee and they'd converse in French. I really miss my grandparents and always wished I'd have learned French so that when I was older and visiting them early in the mornings, that they wouldn't have to struggle through English to converse with me.

Who writes this stuff?

I know many people write about their weight loss journey and about their food choices but I like writing about all sorts of things which eventually, if you think about it, really just leads back to what's going on and how it affects you and what you eat.

I'm sure I can go all Dr Seuss and say we eat when we are happy, and when we are sad. We eat when we are excited, and when we are mad. But................that's not what my blog is about today.

Today my blog is about unintelligible instructions or explanations that are given to us in written format as to explain what we need to do or what you can expect from something.

Confused yet? Yes well, example: Have you ever tried to do your own taxes and was like WTH are they talking about?

Well, today I tried to go through my dental handbook that is supposed to explain what's covered and what's not and the circumstances in which something that is normally covered, isn't and what might not normally be covered may be covered in "x" circumstance. Blah blah blah. And the services themselves? I didn't know what any word meant. I had to look up every word except "bitewing". I think the Dental Association and the IRS are in cohoots. I think I may go to H&R block and throw down my dental booklet and say "I need a routine cleaning and maybe a new filling, how much am I going to have to give?"

And while we are at it, I took a "comedic" defensive driving course the other day. It promised to be full of laughs, but lo and behold, they totally gypped me. I didn't laugh. The truth was, it was a class that sat you in a comedy club and gave you the standard state mandated info. There were no jokes told, there were no smiles cracked, only early 1990 videos that showed bad driving and bad clothes choices. Had I not been a teen/young adult during that time frame, maybe I would have laughed at the Koosh-ball-bang hairdo's but I could only cringe, remembering I have pictures that look just like that.




By the fourth hour I was fighting (as was the rest of the class) to stay awake. Six hours of hell that I could have done online, at home, in my PJ's while watching House of Payne.

Well folks, that is all for now. Don't get used to these long, drawn out paragraphs b/c I am normally short, sweet and to the point.