Strawberries, French Children Behaving Badly and DVD Deals

Last week I finally had my first batch of strawberries for the season! I don’t know about you, but I am always excited for the “fresh fruit” season and I am one to buy strawberries like nobody’s business. The other day when I was at my local market they had such delicious ones for a promo price that I couldn’t resist. My only regret is that I didn’t buy more barquttes of them! I figured that I was going to have one whole barquette to myself. Well, I guessed wrong. Come lunch time when I busted out my strawberries I was in the mind frame to eat them all myself cuz they were so juicy and red. Then Dude gives me that puppy dog look like, “Are you gonna share with me?” I so did not want to, but being the nice person I am, I went halfsies. After eating my half that became a big regret! Usually the first strawberries of the season aren’t the best ever, but that was not the case this time! Next time, I’m not sharing 🙂

Later that night we went out to run errands and decided to stop of at FLUNCH. I’ll admit it isn’t traditional, cozy, south of France like, but I’m finding that going out to eat is really digging into my pocket book and this place give you a pretty good meal for your Euro and you can go back for seconds on some things. The meal ends up being about ½ the price of a local restaurant and so we go every once in a while. Normally it is usually a Monday night we end up there cuz that’s when we camp out at the office and I can’t cook. The restaurant is usually very quiet and not many people since we eat around 9pm. Well, last week we spent the night at the office on Tuesday and going to FLUNCH on a Tuesday was the biggest mistake we made.

The place was packed (it was around 8:30ish) and there were kids EVERYWHERE! I guess that Tuesday night is “bring your kids for a cheap meal” night or something cuz I had never seen this place in such disarray! It was so loud and noisy and as I looked around it only took about 2 seconds for me to realize that the lady who wrote the article a few weeks back about how French kids are better behaved than American kids and how French parents are better than American parents was probably the biggest load of crap I have ever read! I knew that article was a crock the minute I read it, but this was real life, living proof I was right! Not that I am promoting it or anything, but here it is if you want to read the article. I definitely wasn’t seeing or experiencing what she claims to experience and know. Granted I am probably making a bigger deal out of it than I should, but I was a bit burned up by this article and its elevation of French kid’s behavior.

No sooner had I picked up my tray than some family in line was having issues with their two kids. One was in a stroller just screaming her head off and the dad wasn’t doing anything. I assume he was waiting for his wife to console the kid, but she was already occupied with their other kid who threw a conniption cuz the mom took her tray to pass it through the register. In doing so the kid hauled off and smacked the mom. So there was the mom grabbing her kid by the arms to tell her to knock it off and then this kid starts screaming so now they have two kids outta control. Great… I’m so not getting in line after them.

Once we get through the check out, Dude and I survey where to sit cuz I don’t want to be anywhere near the bazillion kids running around and it was just that, they were literally RUNNING in the restaurant. In looking to my right there was a group of four kids and they were bouncing a ball to each other in the restaurant! Seriously! Yelling and running for this ball in the middle of the restaurant and letting it bounce into other people’s tables and chairs!  One kid even knocked over someone’s drink on their table!! Totally not going over there.

So I look to the left and there is another group of kids running around hitting a balloon in the air to each other! REALLY??!! Not going over there, either. Dude just looks at me and says, “Oh man, THEY are EVERYWHERE!” We finally had to find a little corner table, but still couldn’t get away from kids.

Some of them were running around playing tag and hide and go seek in between the tables of the other guests! A few of them knocked over chairs in their effort to get away from each other! Can you imagine! People are coming into the seating area with their trays full of food and they are trying to dodge out a control, running around kids! I would have completely lost it if one of the misbehaving French kids had run into me and I had dropped my tray full of food!

I was finally gonna lose it when three kids came around the back of my chair and were screaming at each other and knocking themselves into my chair. Then one little boy pushed the little girl and she started crying very loudly behind me! This was a dang circus, I tell you.

Do you wanna know what the parents were doing the whole time??!! Absolutely nothing! I never saw one parent get up and get after their child! All the adults just sat there like nothing was happening! I couldn’t believe that every parent considered it normal for their kid to run a round and disturb all the other customers and why the heck did the people working in the restaurant not say anything. There was something seriously wrong here!

Dude and I were disturbed during our whole meal with crying, yelling, screaming, running, pushing and shoving kids. We never ate a meal so fast to get outta there!

If a parent wants to let their kid run around and play during a meal, they need to go to McDo and let ‘em loose in the play area, not inside a restaurant even if it is FLUNCH there is NO excuse for what we witnessed.

I was livid by the time Dude and I left and all I could think about was how I wanted to have a good talk with the woman that wrote that stupid article and tell her what she is really full of!

After getting a breath of fresh air, Dude and I headed over to the market next store to browse the DVD section and take our minds off terrible kids! It worked and soon we were delving into the 3 for 20€ section and having a good time finding some deals.

Goods and services are so expensive here, that we are always looking for deals anywhere we can. Dude and I never go to the movies. We instead have spent a few years building our own DVD collection and, both here and in The States, we would always look for the good deals. If you wait awhile you’re bound to get a few movies for a good price. Sometimes it’s 4 DVD’s for 20€ or 30€ and sometimes it’s 3 for 20€ or some other variation. The movies are usually older ones, but hey, that’s cool. You just gotta be patient. Well, on this night we scored big cuz we found three great movies that were actually not that old! In fact, Dude found three others he wanted too, but we had to stick to the budget so I made him put them back. We’ll get to them the next time around.

Best thing ever was that we had money back on our market card so by the time we scanned the DVDs and got the discount and used our market savings card, we left with only having to pay 4.96€ for everything! Yes!!! I love when stuff like that happens. That’s roughly 1.65€ per DVD! I would say that’s a major score and happy ending to our evening. We promptly went back to the office and created our own movie theatre complete with drinks and goodies 🙂

It was a great way to forget about those French kids behaving badly! By the way, I hope the lady who wrote that ridiculous article reads this and contacts me. I would sure like to give her a piece of my mind!