catch up

Fete de la Musique group...Kate and Jonathan, Sara and Ben, my date the faceless seven year old and me.

My time to write is rapidly diminishing and I know I should be taking advantage of these last few weeks to really write something good. Whatever that means. I just can't seem to find any inspiration. Or maybe the word I'm searching for is motivation. It is so hot that I laid on the tile floor in front of my entire French family yesterday just to suck up a little of the frais--or coolness, of the tiles. They looked at me with that expression the French reserve strictly for Americans. You know, a mixture of disdain, pity, and mocking sympathy. Hey, you do what you gotta do when there isn't clime (air conditioning). Anyways. It's not that France is any less inspiring, it's just that I've come to the conclusion that after nearly a year here I have either a) learned how to avoid all the absurd situations I'm usually faced with or b) learned to ignore the daily insanity that generally "flavors"my life.

Normally something during my week makes me laugh/cry hard enough to sit down at my computer and vent to you (imaginary?) readers. Want to know what it was today? I woke up, made my obligatory stomach ulcer coffee, and sat down at the kitchen table. As I was sifting through everyone else's breakfast crumbs for a placemat, I saw grocery bags scattered all over the floor (cleaning is a foreign concept here) and assumed someone had gone to the supermarket yesterday. I curiously got up to inspect the new purchases in the frigo, secretly hoping to find some Kiri cheese (basically a little cube of cream cheese) to spread on my toast. Whatever, I'm a born and bred chubby kid. The first thing I noticed was a big container of moules (mussels). YUM. In France, you don't say moules without saying frites. Aka french fries. Aka one of my favorite foods EVERRRRR.

I sat back down and began to reflect on the possibility of us eating moules frites today. I didn't want to think too hard, as I could end up sorely disappointed if the moules were in fact for another day. In the midst of my reflection/praying to the universe for moules frites, I happened to turn towards the stove. And there, perched on one of the burners I saw it. The fryer. Taking out the fryer means that homemade french fries are indeed in my very near food future (sometimes I think that I purposely sleep until noon on Sunday just so that I don't have to wait so long for lunchtime). I couldn't help myself. A loud (perhaps too loud?) woohoo escaped my lips. And then I started laughing. I had just gotten visibly excited--perhaps more excited than when I found out about the excommunication of side pony (will explain later)--about the possibility of eating mussels and french fries for lunch. And then I pulled out my computer and decided to write.

And write I shall. Yesterday ma cherie Kate and I went to Fontainebleau, a city not too far from me, to play tourist. There is a huge chateau there (and basically nothing else), so we took the tour followed by a stroll in the huge gardens. I mean, our belief is that once you seen one chateau, you've seen all of them, so you can imagine our enthusiasm for the chateau of Fontainebleau. Still, it was nice to take a little trip to break up the monotony of summer.

My desire to never have children was also solidified this past week after a series of "babyshittings" for a precious little angel of six months. The thing is, I love babies. We had a blast during our few days together. Blast may be a bit strong of a word but you get my drift. And this baby was so good. He smiled constantly, cried rarely, and didn't even have toxic diaper explosions like most babies his age. We walked under the Eiffel Tower together, strolled through museums (okay, he did cry in the museum which was not cool), and explored Paris together, babysitter and baby style. It did get pretty hairy a few times--i.e. when I was running down the road with him wailing in a stroller, just trying to find the closest bench where I could give him his bottle. I got many french looks, not just the disdain and pity one, and one woman was brazen enough to say, "mam, your baby is not very happy". I KNOW BITCH. But it's a baby. It cries. I nearly launched a poo diaper at her. What I realized though was that unlike his parents, I got to give him back at the end of day. When I was exhausted and sweaty and just done playing with a baby, I got to say peace out. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is a beautiful thing.

Aside: my blogging was just disrupted by Alain because he felt obliged to tell me that I didn't know how to correctly cut the salad from the garden. Does it really matter how I extract lettuce from dirt? I also apparently don't know how to peel vegetables or defrost meat. Newsflash: If you don't like how I do things, DO IT YOURSELF.

And I continue to drone on. Tuesday I became a redhead. Again. I have some really nice photos that Alain took (so what if that's vain?) but he hasn't sent them to me yet. It's so rare that I take a nice photo that I will probably post a few as proof that I don't always look so crazed.

Before I move to my closing story, I have to tell you about my continued failure to get the kids on video. They have really taken to singing lately but every single time I pull out the camera they stop. Go figure. So I have a few photos of them instead.

Now, coming back to the excommunication story.I usually keep my love life (or lack thereof) at a good distance from my blog. Primarily because there has been nothing to write about and if there has been, well I don't want any of the suspects in question to read what I blab about them. But I'll take that risk today. I only have twenty more days here, what harm could I do (famous last words)?

So as it happens, I may or may not have a slight crush on someone here. Slight. Because let me tell you, for every good quality he has, there are at least 30 bad ones to negate all of the goodness. For example, his affinity for sleeping his way through all of the girls on an internet dating site in like a month. Or his apparent love for girls who smoke cigarettes and weigh less than 100 pounds. Or his hugely self-inflated ego and the fact that he wears his sunglasses at all hours. You get the point.

Ugh, I just made it sound like I was into a total jerk. Which he isn't at all. I have been very, VERY careful to keep it in the friend zone, thus keeping things nice and light. And plus, even if all those bad things are true, I mainly just think he is cute and French. And I'm leaving in three weeks. No need to make things more serious than they are.

So the biggest hindrance in the quest for Mr. Sunglasses at Night was Side Pony. His girlfriend. Beurrrkkkkkk (or ew, as we Americans say). I tried to like her. I mean, in all honesty she was nice. And cool. Granted I could have benched pressed her with one arm, but all weight issues aside, I thought she was pretty good for him. There was only one thing that really irked me. She always wore a side ponytail. There was no possible way this thing could have been considered cute or trendy. It was a full fledged, high on the head, completely to one side, 80's side pony.

It made me gag.

And fueled the secret dislike. Of course.

So yesterday--long story short--I saw that all traces of Side Pony had been erased from Mr. S@N's fbook. Talk about getting rid of all evidence. Not to mention my creepy fbook tendencies. After much debate and discussion with Kate, we managed to discreetly (okay, not so discreetly) find out that she was in fact out of the picture. As if he hadn't made that clear enough by erasing her in one fell swoop.

Excommunicated shall we say.

That's harsh. I almost, almost felt a little pity for her. I could have given her one of those french disdain/pity/mock sympathy faces. One that read YOUR SIDE PONY SUCKS.