French cows and French waiters

Both are useless.

I've learned two things from my grandmother that I will remember for the rest of my life. One, if the leaves on the trees are silver side up it will thunder. Two, if cows are laying down, it will rain. When my mom came to visit this past week we did quite a bit of train travel through the French countryside, and I saw a lot of cows. I have never seen cows be more indecisive in my life. Tell me why I would ride past a herd of cows and see only one laying down. Leave it to French cows to never agree and stick together. When one cow lays down does this mean there is like a 10 percent chance of rain? Or is it like when you watch the weather on 5 stations and only one says it will rain. It really ruins your day when you can't be sure, and when your only source of weather info is from the cows, you need them to be accurate. Sometimes half of the cows were laying down and half were standing. This probably had nothing to do with the weather, but rather, being oh so French, those cows were probably on strike. Those cows were probably giving the middle hoof to the other cows saying "well it has to rain at some point! And on that day, we will have correctly predicted the weather. I'll stand when they give us six weeks of vacation instead of just five." You would never see this in America. If one cow is laying down on the job while the others are working hard at eating grass, you best believe the next time that cow is laying down it's on the buther's table.

There are hundreds of travel books out there that mention the "special" experience of dining out in France and encountering the French waiter. Guess what? Even in France serving food to a table requires no special talent, so take it down a few notches, mmmkay? I was a waitress for six years, so I know it can be stressful and difficult a lot of the time, but in no way is it an artform. You are not prophets of whatever diety you believe in, serving it's message in the form of food on a plate only to those who you deem worthy enough to receive it. I know you don't work for tips so you really have no motivation to treat me "well" or with "respect," but we are all people here. Do you not cry when watching "Terms of endearment"? Do you not bleed when hungry diners who are not from France stab you with their fork? I have a longchamp purse and puma sneakers so I really don't know what about me screams "american" and "ignore me." I've had some really long conversations with nice people who halfway through will ask me "so where in england are you from?" so I know you can't really tell by my accent that I'm american. You just know I'm not French, and that's sin enough.