The (lost) charm of being a "Sunday Child"

I was born on a Sunday. So was my husband. They say (at least in Holland) that children born on a Sunday carry an extra charm, and will often have good luck in their lives...

It seemed to be true when I was living in Holland. Pretty much everything went pretty smoothly. I was chosen among 100 candidates to go on an educational trip abroad when in high school, I passed a difficult college entrance exam. I found the love of my life (although it took a while), I had the best job in the world. But I think I lost that charm when I left Holland to join my hubby in his career pursuit and gave up my own super job and with it part of my identity.

On my CV, it doesn't seem that I gave up my career at that moment. My job in the US looks great on paper, but I hated it. When we moved to France (which I was happy about, because I was escaping from this job), I thought it would be relatively easy to find a job again. No work permit issues like in the US. But 3.5 years and many applications later, I've only been invited to a handful of interviews and never made it to a second round.

A gap in your CV is a big sin in France, but if I got to the interview stage, what kept coming up was the question if my hubby would be changing jobs and countries again soon, because they "don't want to start another search in three months". And (yes, they know they're not allowed to ask), "What about children?" Thank you all so much for your confidence! Grr...

My hubby had a bad day at work two weeks ago. He saw a job ad and applied. He got invited. He made it to the second round. They didn't ask him if his wife had a career or intended to change countries again, if he had little children he had to take care of. No, they just looked at his qualifications, were convinced by what he told them and if he hadn't said 'no' to the second round (after some good discussion at home), he'd probably would have gotten the job. Mind you, the job he currently has is awesome. He has a great career. He's building a super network. OK, I know, I'm jealous. I know I shouldn't be, because jealousy is a useless emotion (I'm quoting my wise sister here).

And another thing about this Sunday Child Charm - why did it take us a f**ing five years to get pregnant?!

I think we both lost the charm for a while. Seems my hubby has definitely found it again. And I'm hoping it's coming back to me to. So that the pregnancy will continue normally and result in a healthy baby. That maybe this part-time job opening that was talked about two weeks ago is really going to happen. I know I shouldn't complain. We're very blessed. I just woke up crying today. Blame it on the hormones... (and thankfully I have a blog to vent my frustration!)

Dutch skies

Well, our road trip was long but went well and we arrived safely at my parents' place yesterday evening. The stopover in Paris was actually kind of fun, I got to sit in at my hubby's meeting which turned out to be a 2.5 hour crazy creative brainstorming session between some very intelligent people. We also had found a parking space pretty easily. The only bad thing was that the meeting was around lunchtime, but there was nothing to eat or drink, so when we finally got back into the car and could have a sandwich and some water, I had a pretty bad headache which lasted for the rest of the day...

So we're now in Holland for a week. It's always good to be back. Everything is so familiar. The Dutch skies are great (although there are no 'typical' Dutch skies - i.e. lots of big clouds, see 17th and 18th century paintings from the Dutch masters - today, it's clear and sunny). My parents are of course also very happy to see us and want to check out my (still hardly visible) tummy. My grandmothers will come tomorrow, so we can show off some u/s pics again. :-) We'll also try to see some friends again this week, always a bit of an 'issue' when we go back to Holland: you try to see as many friends and family members as possible, which then means you're just running and driving around like crazy to do this in the few days you have available and you are completely exhausted when you're back home. And if you don't do it, some people feel 'left out' because you didn't visit them while you were in the country... The best solution is actually to tell everyone to go to a certain place at a certain date and time, so you'll see everyone at once. But that's not always possible (or we forget to organize it beforehand, which is more often the case).

On the road

Today we're driving to my parents in Holland for Christmas, 9-10 hours on the road. Normally I quite like road trips, but we've done this stretch already so many times that I'm not really looking forward to it, although today we'll have a change of scenery because we have to go via Paris instead of Luxembourg. 'Have to' because hubby told me he has a meeting with an architect... As he'd been traveling like crazy for the past couple of weeks, he didn't want to go there on Saturday (2 hours by high-speed train) and come back the same day, but prefers to 'conveniently' combine it with our trip up north.

He had mentioned this possibility a week ago already, but was then still leaning towards going there and back on Saturday. Then this week he said his boss would go, so I was relieved. But of course the boss is a smart-ass and doesn't want to work the weekend before Christmas, so now hubby has to go. In a way he even likes it, because the architect specifically asked for him (and he thought his boss would be unhappy about that), so he's kind of flattered...

From here to Paris is 4 to 5 hours by car. The meeting will probably start around noon, so that means we have to leave around 7 am (if we would have taken our regular route, we could have left around 10 am and still be at my parents' place in time for dinner), hopefully find a secure place to park our fully loaded car somewhere in central Paris (when I mentioned that to hubby he was like 'oh, no problem, it's Sunday'. Yes, but it's the Sunday before Christmas which means all the shops will be open - normally not the case in France - and it'll be very busy!), hope the meeting doesn't last longer than two hours (and what am I going to do in the meantime? I know, I shouldn't say this, many of you might trade in a lot for two hours in Paris) so we can get going again, don't get stuck too long on the 'péripherique' to get out of the city and hopefully still arrive on time in Holland for dinner (another 5 to 6 hours).

Pfff, I'm exhausted already (and I probably have to catch up on IComLeavWe tomorrow)!

Friends leaving...

The thing about living in a foreign country is that most of the new friends you get in that country are foreigners themselves too. When we lived in the US, most of our friends were Dutch (which is actually horrible to admit) and many of them (including us, obviously) have in the meantime moved back to Holland or to other countries.

Here in France we found some great new friends and neighbors, a better mix of nationalities this time: German, Spanish, French, English, American and yes, a Dutch one too...

Our German neighbors moved into our apartment building a week after we did, a little over three years ago. We immediately got along very well - dinners, BBQ's, joint outings, etc. followed. We took care of mail and plants when either of us was on vacation, and I took care of their baby during work hours for the 6 week-period between the end of her maternity leave and the opening of their company's daycare center.

Today, they moved back to Germany. He got another position at his company. I'm sure we'll stay in touch, but it won't be the same. I hate to see them go, they are really great and very sweet people. A British friend also announced last week that she'll be leaving town, and moving to Luxembourg this summer...

Oh well, that's the expat life I guess... even though we're not real expats (not send by a company in our home country to work somewhere else for 3-5 years), since my hubby is on a local contract and so it's entirely up to us how long we stay in France. For the moment we have no intention of moving again any time soon and hopefully our remaining friends here will stick around a little longer too.