A Sleepless Night

I live with an elephant and a nocturnal squirrel. Many would read that statement and declare me insanse, potentially put me against my will into a mental institution- until that person would spend one night in my apartment.

It's bad enough that the two boys (Bro and Bri) are nocturnal beings and sleeping at 12am is considered insane, but the fact that Bro is jetlagged and wandering around at 4am Skyping friends doesn't help. It was 7am here in France when I heard a voice, it got louder and the doors opened... stomping around the apartment. Fortunately I found a 19th century apartment, most likely built for a small nobility for super cheap. Unfortunately this apartment has paper-walls, and the wandering around sounded like a warzone.

I pulled myself out of my dream and out of bed, found Bro in the bathroom (apparently our sink facilities are interesting enough to show off on Skype) and begged him to stop and go to his room to Skype. He cut me off, waved his hand, stated,"Mom and I Talked about this." End of conversation.  I wandered back, lost, and thought, Yah, you may have talked to mom, but SHE DOESN'T LIVE HERE.

An earplug in tow I had a fitful morning until 8:45am when Bri had to get up to go to school. He was just as bad.  Bri got up, slammed around the apartment, stomped into the kitchen for breakfast and blew his nose- for like 20 seconds.  It sounded like an elephant with constipation, loud, annoying.. and I could hear it through my earplug.  It stopped, cereal was poured and out he stomped back into the living room.  I could hear Bro chatting away (5 hours later) in his room and Bri crunching away on his cereal.  I thought, Am I the only normal person here?  Can I sleep now?!

Not all is bad.  It's good to watch my 17 year old Bro go through the motions of culture shock.  He's noticing the oddest things however... there are more calories in MacDo (not true), people in France are terrible drivers (sometimes true), he is magically fluent in French when I'm not around (probably not true), everything is written in French (obviously true) and French people eat a lot of bread and weird cheeses (definitely true).

The French teenagers are picking up on him; they find him like a large toy- he speaks English, he's blond and cute... he's American.  He's already made more friends than I was able to make in 6 months- even if he only understands and can speak about 60% at the normal rate.  It's fun to have him come home and recount the French teenager's asking him all about America and him trying to detail in Franglais.

The potential for more sleep tonight seems unlikely in light of recent elephant/squirrel phenomena, however, I might just take a light sedative and allow them to scamper and stomp to their heart's desire.

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