Lost (Happy New Year)

I spent the better part of yesterday on the sofa watching Lost.

I've never before been the serial type, but was grateful - upon rousing myself from the hangover bed - to find my roommate's DVD collection.

Television is such powerful escapism. I'd forgotten about it during my six weeks of squatting. It's even more effective than, say, drinking one's own body weight in champagne and pretending to be a libertine.

Another New Year's Eve, another attempt to wipe clean the temporal lobe slate. This wasn't the first year that I'd drank too much on NYE, but it was the first time I'd done so alone. Alright, okay, so I was hardly alone. But I wasn't in the bosom of my long-time friends, and it had me feeling a bit maudlin.

I looked around the party and couldn't ignore what was missing: Loretta dancing in a giant pajama sack...Roshen passing out the lyric sheets...Friese tossing his wig under a canopy of paper foliage...Jennifer not knowing when to stop with the jello shots...

What? That was me?

And, of course, Jayson. In their place were some strangers who were doing a miserable job of already knowing me. Several hours after midnight, with the party nowhere near dying down, I grabbed my coat and fled to the Pont des Arts.

I stood for some time staring blankly at the city, waiting for an epiphany to bubble up from the Seine. In its place came a text message from Yorkshire, reading:

"I'm in a bar with lots of rough people with non-ironic mullets..." followed by some unrepeatable instructions on lightening the hell up.

In lieu of further revelation, I went back to the party. And I had, against all odds, a very good time.

Reinvention seems to be a little easier on Lost. A plane crash strands them on a tropical island and these characters can be whoever they want to be. The criminal becomes a do-gooder. The wounded cripple is suddenly a hero.

So what exactly am I supposed to be? Your suggestions, particularly if accompanied by costume ideas, would be appreciated.

And seriously, are there really polar bears on that island?

Happy New Year.

O.P.P.

"It's not you, it's me," I say to François, as I make my goodbye at the door. The phone is buzzing and I'm eager to answer, so I smile guiltily and rush out into the stairwell.

Could it have worked - a philospher in a sport coat on the rue du Louvre? I don't have much time to think as I race down into the Métro.

I'm late to meet Yann, tall and cute in the 10th. He welcomes me in but wants small talk before we get into it. And all I can think about is seeing the bedroom...

Looking for a roommate is a lot like whoring dating. Furtive textos, quickie drop-ins, and promises to call. It's sordid and exhausting, but there's a certain thrill to it all.

Getting down with O.P.P. is a new development for le Meg. It's been nearly a decade since I last dabbled in other people's property.

A whole lot has changed since then in the way that people look for one another. Simply finding eachother, nine years ago, was a word-of-mouth affair. We can now go online to fill our bedrooms. We can email, send pictures, google the hell out of eachother.

I myself was picked up through this blog. A tall Aussie sent a cautious first note. I replied and got another one with pictures and a link to her blog. The words "wine industry" and "Montmartre" were bandied about. "When can we meet?" I asked breathily on the phone.

Two anglophone girls unafraid of commitment - we jumped headlong into the affair. And even emailed eachother the next morning.

So while it was fun - my brief affairs with Yann, Julien, Mei, François, Leonard, dear Bennett and Franck - I'm pretty glad to be back in a relationship.

I know where I'm sleeping from now on, who I'm coming home to every night. I can stop running around and focus again on the important things in life.

You know, like fighting over the dirty dishes.

Super Stud(ette)

Last night I rode the train into unchartered territory, recalling Paris to the Moon and a syrupy passage about Métro stops imagined but never seen.

Adam Gopnik's heart of darkness was the Goutte d'Or, an area rarely visited by left-bankers like himself. Mine, on the other hand was the (more than one drop) 16th.

The author cooed as he trundled past the Château Rouge stop - imagining a storybook cottage waiting for his family outside. I, on the other hand, clenched as we rolled through Passy and I realized that for the first time in my life there were no brown faces on the Métro.

I admit it: I am scared to death of the 16th.

Out of the Métro and in unsafe open waters, I hurried head down to my destination. I held my bag close and made no eye contact with the nannies. I was very nearly running.

What was I even doing in that neighborhood, you ask?

Getting the best haircut of my life, that's what. A towering Scotswoman, a friend of a friend, cuts it for cheap out of her apartment. There was sipping and snipping and bagging on men while we waited for my hair to turn blond-ish. She told me tales about working the fashion shows and offered her chambre de bonne if I need it. It was another planet, but incredibly fun.

I left with a sashay and headed to my first apartment visit of the night. I was hopped up on adrenaline, feeling capable and adventurous. If I could visit the 16th, maybe I could also find an apartment.

I was not, before last night, familiar with the concept of the studette. I hadn't thought there was anything smaller than a studio until I visited this diminutive bed-box in the Marais.

A mattress on a mezzanine, a shower I had to crawl into, and no light from either window - was this really to be my new reality? An Italian girl ten years my junior explained that she only slept there after dancing.

It was raining when I left and headed back to my beloved 19th. "My email will be full of offers," I told myself as my heavily sprayed hair began to stick to my cheeks. I began to hum a little as I made my way along the Bassin - a snippet from the Magnetic Fields song Nothing Matters When We're Dancing, with lyrics altered to suit a newly-imagined stud(ette) lifestyle.

"I only sleep there after dancing..."

Save Le Meg!

Five months ago I read a headline on the Paris Blog inviting me to "Save Petite!"

Catherine, aka Petite Anglaise, had been fired for blogging and alarms were sounding all around the sphere. It wasn't clear what readers were meant to do - how exactly we were supposed to save her - but she ended up somehow with a two book deal from Penguin.

It's my turn now to summon the mighty power of the internet. My request, however, is more modest, and I have clear directions for my rescue:

Le Meg needs an apartment!

Some of you readers have discerned a shift - a bit of personal upheaval - between the lines of my recent posts. Thank you for the many encouraging comments regarding this new direction. My favorites include:

"You're only interesting when you mock yourself,"
"Your last three posts are dysentery," and
"Peeeeeee youuuuuuuuu"

Point taken: my soft underbelly is not in high demand. You want snark. Self-deprecation. More talk about vagina.

I can give you this. But I want something in return:

A studio or one bedroom apartment. Short-term, long-term, furnished, un-furnished, shared or solo, I'm a little bit pressé.

The gorgeous 40 m eden that I had arranged in Montmartre just fell through. The occupants, on the same day I was to sign, decided not to move. So I found myself yesterday looking at 10 m hovels and contemplating the potential of a hot plate.

To quote Peggy Lee, "is that all there is?"

Surely you must know of something. Make my dreams come true at leblagueur@gmail.com and I promise to write you daily missives depricating my own vagina. What more could you want?

Wait, don't answer that.

________________________________________________

A few specs, in answer to your questions:

1) The dog is not coming with me.
2) 750 for something beautiful and 500 for a dump.
3) North/east Paris preferred (9-11, 18-20), but I'm flexible.
4) ASAP or in January; temporary, shared and housesitting OK.
5) I can cook.

When IKEA attacks

I was mauled today by Swedish furniture.

An unassuming Billy case lurched from its cardboard box, ripping through my forearm and punishing my toes.

Wiping blood from a faux chêne finish is simple enough. A newfound fear of IKEA, however, may not be so easily erased.

The first time I heard about IKEA was in the movie Fight Club. "What kind of dining set defines me as a person?" asked a soul-less Ed Norton while flipping through a catalog on the toilet.



IKEA hadn't yet come to Chicago, so it would be years before my first sojourn to the giant blue box. On that day, I came away cash poor but rich with all the barware that a graduate student could need.

Outside of one or two "experimental" visits, however, IKEA was never a habit while I lived in the States. The objects in my life came from thrift stores and alleyways. Dressers were found and re-finished, not ordered and assembled.

That all changed when we moved to France. The logic in shipping cast-offs across the ocean was questionable, so we sold the old lamps, wobbly table and velvet paintings.

We arrived in Paris planning to buy new, but there weren't many affordable options. Beyond IKEA was a world in which objects were either ugly, expensive, or undeliverable. Without a car or much money, we needed IKEA if we were going to live with more than an inflatable mattress on the floor. So we swallowed our consumer conscience and set out to fill the apartment with particle board.

In a single afternoon we ordered everything - bed, dressers, bookshelves, tables, and chairs. We waited for weeks in our empty apartment until the delivery company finally turned up.

I spent days assembling the lot of it, including a bookcase that was missing a third of its shelves. Those parts never arrived, and their sister bits were transformed into a kitchen counter. We swore we would never order from IKEA again.

Our next pair of bookshelves came from Conforama. Twice the cost and doubly fugly - they now lean dramatically to the side. IKEA cases may be shoddy, but they don't require kitchen twine to keep them from falling over.

The ban on IKEA was lifted last week to buy more shelves. The boxes arrived without incident and I found myself wondering why I'd ever made such a fuss. IKEA wasn't the devil, I reasoned. They were just a private "foundation" offering affordable solutions for better living.

That was before I was Billy clubbed - before I saw the hidden evil lurking within these objects.

I tremble now in my Noresund bed, wondering when the next attack will come. I scan the room and realize that I'm vastly outnumbered. IKEA has successfully infiltrated every corner of this apartment. Perhaps tonight I will sleep with the Kroby light on, or put a Herman chair in front of the door.

My soul, I see now, is not enough for them.

Leaving Ellie

My little elevator.

It was love at first sight when I met her in the lobby. She was slim, well-adorned, and complicated - like every other Parisian girl I would come to know.

Ellie's slender shape is what originally caught my eye. She's tiny, accomodating only three French or two American riders. Four have been known to ascend, fuelled by hope and red wine. Four have also been known to get stuck.

Pull back Ellie's glossy black outer door and there's a golden retractable gate. Once inside, her buttons must be pressed delicately and held for at least a few seconds. She will tolerate no thick-fingered jabbing.

The list of other things that Ellie will not tolerate has grown over time. There have been minor tantrums and strandings all along, but our real trouble began last winter. Without warning one day she refused to come to my floor. No technician in the world could convince her to return to me. There was nothing to do but get out at 5 or 7 and walk.

I'm not the only tenant on the outs with Ellie. More recently she has refused, following a fight with the conceirge, to visit the lobby. This creates the odd necessity of climbing up one flight in order to ride for 4 or 6 and then walk one. Try explaining that to a visitor.

With all of this drama, my legs have understandably started to wander a bit. I've been sneaking around and climbing the stairs behind Ellie's back. It makes me feel better about myself, less dependent. The more I climb, the more I realize I don't need her anymore.

We both know that it's over. And yet last night - when it was late and I'd had to much to drink - I found myself still wanting to be inside of her. Ellie opened up and took me in without a word. We moved silently in the dark as if nothing bad had ever happened.

Call it a breakup ride.

Flip the tape, dude

I rearranged the boudoir last weekend and discovered a box of mix tapes under the bed.

Do you remember the mix tape?

I'm listening now to "Mix Tape #1," which was given to me ten years ago by a bearded poet in Arizona. I can barely make out the song list now, but know from repetition how every song melts into the next. Disorientation sets in if, out in the real world, a particular Built to Spill song isn't immediately followed by Refrigerator's "Colton."

I've been putting a lot of my music on the computer lately, devising song lists to distract my culinary victims. It's not the same, is it? A mix tape was always heavy, there were choices involved. You couldn't fit everything on it - not even a fancy 90-minute tape - and the order was incredibly important. Putting 72 songs on random feels, by contrast, a bit cavalier.

The advantage to computer music is versatility. This is important in Paris because I can no longer predict what people will like. The tastes around the table may range from Fado to German electronica, from Brit pop to Django Reinhardt. I can't put on GBV after a night of drinking and expect folks to know it, much less pump their fists in the air (Loretta, you are missed).

So we experiment, all of us, with eachother's "international" music. I try the Mountain Goats with one country and get Die Sterne in return from another. Half of it I like, and the other half I hope to learn to like.

But on some nights, when every fiber is sick of growing, it's great to just kick back and rewind with a mix tape. To conjure, with the help of Uncle Tupulo, the known but long ago world where real men wore hoodies and drank Old Style - where Converse were universally filthy.

Does that not sound like paradise? I guess you had to be there.

Paris, plus calme

My relationship with the city always shifts, at least temporarily, when friends visit Paris. Like a sponge, I absorb their impressions and find myself both loving and hating the city in new ways.

Playing tour guide breaks my routine and forces me into neighborhoods that are usually avoided. Travelers generally don’t care about the merits of Belleville or my favorite dive bar. They want to stroll along the Seine, chase after ghosts, visit postcard Paris. And in accommodating them - usually in the 1st, the Marais, and the Latin Quarter - I’m always reminded just how beautiful this city is. I become a booster, a hack historian. “Look at this!” I squeal, impervious to the wearied faces of my companions.

And wearied they usually are. For visitors, Paris is exhausting. To get around, unless you spend a fortune on cab fare, you need to walk, climb stairs, and spend hours in the Métro. I myself was drained during my first visit to Paris. I had to buy a special numbing cream (Nifluril) for my aching feet, much to the dismay of my guides. Walking doesn’t faze me anymore, though, and I will drag visitors around for hours before I notice that they are half-crying. A Saturday stroll for le Meg can be a death march for someone used to driving.

To complicate matters, the “rest” afforded by cafés or restaurants can be quite stressful for visitors. American tourists in particular are overly-sensitive to how servers are treating them, and a five euro coffee (in the tourist zones) can feel exasperating. For dinner, I often struggle to find a restaurant that can accommodate friends’ requests for something “cheap” and “real French” that has vegetarian options (and is also open on Monday).

It’s hard to tell a tourist that they need to spend 30 euros to have a decent meal in Paris (excluding the good North African or Asian options that visitors never seem to go for). But there’s nothing worse than spending 21 euros on something awful, knowing that you could have had something delightful for 10 euros more. And when it’s awful, these wearied travelers (with high expectations for French food) seem to be slightly broken.

On the other hand, when it’s good – when Paris performs brilliantly on the food front – I find myself feeling so proud. I had this feeling the other night at Chez Casimir with friends who were returning from 3 months in the States. Chez Casimir, for those who don’t know it, is the cheaper sister bistro of Thierry Breton’s Chez Michel. We’ve been three times over 2 years and have never been disappointed.

We were just beginning to catch up when the first starter, a terrine de campagne, was brought to the table. Served in a giant ceramic terrine with a knife in its heart, this was slightly edged out by the deliciously salty tartare de haddock à l’ancienne.

By the time the plats arrived, we had landed again on our regular topic – comparisons of the US vs. France. Andy and Caroline, who lived together in the States and spend months there every summer, couldn’t wait to return to Paris. After months of eating in New York, Andy was happy to be back at the French table. “This is exactly what I want,” he said, while taking bites of his confit de porc et son gratin. “Talking with friends at a restaurant like this, where you can eat like this for not much money. It’s so calm.”

And he was right. Because I live here, it’s not exhausting to zip by Métro over to Gare du Nord, walk three blocks, read a menu, order, and then relax. I know how to speak, I know this food. I’m not freaked out over the 100 euro bill (for four) because I don’t eat out every night. For visitors, this whole experience would be completely different.

As I explained to a dear friend visiting from Norway who asked how on earth can you live here? our Paris has nothing to do with the one she witnessed around Châtelet. I work. I go to the market. I ride my bike. I walk the dog. I see shows and expos, but not three per day. It is calm.

Could this mean that I’m settling in?

Le Coup de Chance

My first cut in Paris went something like this:

I arrived at a recommended salon armed with pictures and a modest vocabulary. I asked for a coupe de cheveux en dégradé and a brushing. What I got was the exact same cut that every other woman my age seemed to be wearing.

So the next time I changed both salon and approach. I chose a hipster-looking coiffeur and told him in broken French to “create whatever you dream.” My stylist’s dream, it turned out, was to give me a modified Job Bob with slightly longer layers. He earned points, though, for managing to smoke and snip at the same time. I went back to Les Intondables twice based on the merits of its jukebox and proximity to Sushi Yakatori Bagel.

Months later, with frange dangling in my eyes, I ran a search on “English-speaking salons” in Paris. I visited an English website. I called and booked an appointment speaking English. Upon meeting my stylish, I burst forth all in English with my stream of requests and small prayers. I watched Aurélie’s face begin to blanche. She spoke beautiful French and not a word of my mother tongue. It was, however, the best cut I’d received in Paris, so I returned three times before she disappeared into the suburbs.

Last week, returning home from a battle over my working papers, I paused at the doorstep of a trendy salon. I had recently seen enough vacation pictures of myself to know that a cut was in order tout de suite. So without an appointment or a second thought I found myself walking into the “Toxic” branch of Toni & Guy. The music was thumping, the stylists were beautiful. The beverage girl seemed to be flirting.

I knew I’d found someplace special when the shampoo chair began to vibrate. I felt so relaxed after tea and massage that I scarcely noticed my transformation. Gone now is the pony tail, the wispy lock across my forehead. In their place are seven hundred jaggy bits which, when taken together, make me look “butch.” Or so le mec tells me. Seven hundred bits which, when they grow out, are going to look completely CRAZY, ensuring that I will be back at Toni & Guy before the last autumn leaf falls.

The problem now is that my hair is much cooler than I am. Like Diderot’s new dressing gown, it just calls attention to my many other deficiencies of style. I can no longer wear those shoes with my new haircut. And that skirt? Forget about it.

Between the hair and my reduced wardrobe of six well-worn items, I feel I’m two giant steps closer toward being parisienne. All I need now is some lingerie.

Signs of the Times

Two years ago I stood dumb before my fishmonger, wondering why in the world I wasn’t getting any scallops.

Had I used the wrong word (Coquilles Saint-Jacques)? Had I not ushered the proper greeting? No, I understood after the third repetition: they were not in season.

Not in season? In America I could buy scallops whenever I wanted. But now, on the eve of my first dinner party in France, the pesky bi-valves were nowhere to be found. With Serge and Agnès arriving in less than an hour, I pointed hopefully to some white flesh-looking fish and returned home to struggle with its bones.

Despite the fact that I was raised in the “breadbasket to the world,” I had no sense of seasonality before moving to France. The same items were present year-round from my stadium-sized grocery store. They were cheaper in certain months, but always available.

In France, during that first month, I felt constrained. There were fewer options in smaller stores that seemed never to be open when I needed them. The recipes that had formerly dazzled were, without the right ingredients, of little use to me now.

I had to re-learn how to eat.

Eating in France means following the seasons. My next lesson was the autumn appearance of wild mushrooms. Months later, the arrival of clementines marked time for a city without snow. Oysters burst onto to scene with crowds gathering for free tastings at the local poissonnerie. Within months friends were whispering about springtime lamb and asparagus. And summer, before I knew it, had come 'round again - bringing deep red tomatoes and stacks of fresh herbs.

Last night I cooked again for Serge and Agnès. This time, however, I went about it in a much different way. Gone were the convoluted recipes and fusion acrobatics. In their place, an offering of what’s best in September:

Salad of endive, radicchio, beets, pears, goat cheese, and hazelnut
Roast chicken and potatoes with green beans
Seasonal plums (mirabellle, Reine Claude, quetsche) with a runny Brie de Meaux

When you buy food that’s in season, you don’t have to do much besides put it on a plate. The Brie de Meaux, which had been aged for eight weeks in my butcher’s cave and set out only when it was ready to be eaten that day, was runny and redolent of green summer grass. The plums were at the peak of ripeness – perfect in the moment and rotten the next morning on my counter.

So to paraphrase the Rolling Stones:

You can’t always get what you want
But if you try sometimes to follow the times
You just might find...you get what you need (and more).

The Weekly Gaffe: A+

[The Weekly Gaffe is a non-weekly series about french foibles.]




Overheard recently:

le Meg - You know, I really like Peter.

le mec - And why is that?

le Meg - The way he signs his emails; it's just great. When everyone else is full of "pas mal" and avoiding hyperbole...

le mec - Meg?

le Meg - ...he says "A+". I mean, it's almost transgressive. Top of the morning, nothing could be better...

le mec - Um, Meg?

le Meg - ...allright it's a little bit dorky, but...

le mec - Meg!!

le Meg - Yes?

le mec - See you later.

le Meg - Where are you going?

le mec - à plus tard.

le Meg - Well, then, when are you coming back?

le mec - à plus...A+...get it?

le Meg - Fine. Don't tell me. I'm not your mother, anyway.

The Comeback Kids

On Monday morning I awoke early, walked the dog, and got myself ready for the first day back to work. I grabbed a jacket on my way out the door and reluctantly covered my rapidly-fading tan.

In the subway it struck me with unwelcome force that summer was fully over. SLAM!

On my left I spied leather boots and tweed. On my right: scarves as far as the eye could see. The billboards were peddling their back-to-school wares and I had a strange hankering for root vegetables.

La rentrée, dear friends, is in full effect. And the effect is substantial, as are the vacations from which the French are returning.

“Vacation?”

The brows of my American readers are pinched. Let me explain:

Vacation [vey-key-shuhn] - noun
A period of suspension of work, study, or other activity, usually used for rest, recreation, or travel.

“Whah?...”

I know: it’s a difficult concept. French workers (those with a real contract, anyway) are entitled annually to five weeks paid vacation. In practice, however, the French take closer to seven paid weeks every year.

“But that’s almost two months!”

This figure is almost impossible to understand for Americans who, at all levels of employment, have a very different orientation to time off.

Nearly a quarter of American workers, particularly those in part-time or temporary jobs, are not offered any paid vacation. I spent many years waiting tables, during which time I was obliged to locate a replacement for every day of (uncompensated) “missed” work. If I couldn’t find a replacement, I couldn’t go. Vacations, as a result, entailed economic hardship and were limited to summer weddings and a few days around Christmas.

When paid vacation is offered, it’s usually a pittance and dependent on the number of years employed by a company. Because American workers change jobs more often than their European counterparts, their vacation eligibility is kept relatively low. Nine days per year is the average for workers with one year at a company. What’s more: these precious days are often “spent” by workers with health problems or care-giving responsibilities after their small allotment of “personal” and “sick” days has been used up.

Finally, there is a class of American worker who, despite a more generous benefits package, chooses not to take vacation. A recent survey showed that among workers who are entitled to paid vacation, 36% were not planning to use all of it. These are the people who “do not have the time” for a vacation, who feel their whole professional universe will crumble when they leave their desk. Often these unspent vacation days are translated into a monetary pay-out at the end of the year or when the worker changes jobs.

French workers and their families leave town for three weeks minimum in late July and August. The obvious result is that businesses are closed or operating with minimal staffing during this time. The workers may be traveling or spending time at the family country home - the important thing is that they are not working.

As a result (or perhaps cause?) of this time away, the French tend to be much less work-oriented than Americans. At a French dinner party you will not be asked about your profession. At least not until after the more-interesting topics (including your last vacation) have been exhausted. By contrast, I often found myself in Boston wishing I’d brought a stack of resumes to hand out at social events. “Where do you work? What degrees to you have? From where?...”

My Boston salary, it should be said, was more than double what I now earn. And thus we stumble upon the main argument against French vacation: that it just costs too much.

But is that true? And moreover, so what?

My salary, while low by American standards, is sufficient for my life in Paris. This is helped by the fact that I don’t have to pay hundreds of dollars every month for health insurance, car insurance, car loan, and gas. If I didn’t have student loans, which the French don’t, I’d be living even higher on the chestnut-fed hog. Same goes for “if I owned my own apartment,” which many Parisians do.

To experience serious salary increase, the French would have to barter away the things that make their lives better. And the overwhelming majority of them are unwilling to trade this for the contestable glory of consumer living.

So they sit, well-tanned and talkative, on the first-Monday Métro. Smiling contentedly that they still have something from which to return.

Ring My Bell

Today's episode in nincompoopery unfolds with our heroine pedalling happily to work along the Canal St. Martin. The sun is shining, but not hot enough to warm the unwelcome smells of the sidewalk. Everything seems to be perfect...

When all of the sudden, Old Man appears in the bike lane. "Pardon!" I chirp, but the white hair doesn't see me. "Excusez-moi!!" I yell with more force as the distance narrows between us. It is only when I begin to squawk "Ding-DING! ding-ding-ding!!!" that Monsieur raises his head and takes the necessary steps to avoid being flattened by my machine of terror.

Moments later, it occurs to me: "I could buy a bell." Epiphany strikes just as I am crossing the doorstep of Atelier Go Sport, a bike repair shop along avenue Richard-Lenoir.

I wheel my bike in and say bonjour to the repairman who is airing some tires. I select my bell for 2.90 and join the line of women at the register. It's slow-going, as each customers' purchases are taken out of the package and attached somewhere on their bike. After 20 minutes, I'm up:

"Hi," I say in french. "Would it be possible for you to mount me?"

Eyes widen. I repeat, "C'est possible de me monter?"

"You're not shy," he tells me.

Shall we review a little french?

Vocabulary: monter - to assemble... to organize, set up (hey, that's right!)... to climb; to ride (oh, Christ.) as in a horse; to go upstairs.

Grammar: direct object pronouns - the bell receives the action. Not le Meg.

What I should have said was "C'est possible de la monter pour moi?"

What I did say inaugerates a new Blagueur series, the Weekly Gaffe. Tune in next week as I continue my reign of error among the people of Paris. Ring-a-ding-ding!

Chaud 'nuff

It's not for my own sake that I complain about the heat. It's out of concern for poor Mirth, here. I came home from work last night and found her exactly as I left her, panting before the fan in our 6th floor apartment.

I protested much while in the US about the constant air conditioning, especially while watching An Inconvenient Truth. But the absence of climatisation in Paris really does have a way or reorganizing one's life.

La Page Francaise has a nice little list of beat-the-heat strategies to check out. Readers over 18 may also want to check out this vintage nugget from Gone Feral. Here are my own adaptations to the canicule:

1) No eating! Or at least noting sauced or sautéed. For days the only things that have passed my lips include fruit, cheese, bread and salad. Oh, and chocolate. From the fridge. With ice cream.

2) No drinking! Alcohol dehydrates, and I already feel pleasantly lightheaded from the heat.

3) No touching! Or at least not after 7 am.

4) No working! My office, like many, is without air conditioning. We show up early, make an effort until noon, lie listless in a pool of sweat for several hours, and then go home early.

4) No RATP! The second worst place on earth to be during this heat is on a Paris bus. The first, without question, is on the dank and airless subway. Solution: on your feet, soldier! Alternately: bike riding is the best and only way to catch a breeze in this town, and it's damn fun.

In conclusion, french people are skinny and have more vacation than you because it's hot. So turn off that a/c, America, and get ready for greatness!

Le Merdier = a fine mess, a jam, a fix (literally, the shitpile)

Following in the footsteps of American dieters who place carrot sticks in the fridge at eye-level, I have taken lately to leaving my grammar books on display. By fanning them attractively, the stack will someday lure me while en route to other pressing obligations (red wine, couch) and nudge me toward conjugation.

Learning a language and losing weight are not so different, in the end. Both require (I am told) some degree of self-discipline over time. Or, in my case, short bursts of super-hyped effort that will inevitably fizzle in favor of other distractions (white wine, boules).

The similarities don’t end there. Like the dieter who wears too-small jeans as a cilice, the language slacker living abroad benefits from near-constant appraisal of her “progress.” I can read this in the eyebrows of my compatriots: raised = sympathetic, as when speaking to a child; furrowed = really? Two years and this is the best you can do?

I can also measure it by the number of missing words in a conversation: “We went to Normandy over the weekend and ___ ______, then ___ my grandmother _­_ ___ ___ the chicken!” To which I invariably reply, “ah bon? C’est super.”

And like the waistline of the dieter, my language comprehension will advance or retreat significantly during any given month. One week I’m feeling strong; I can watch the Simpsons in french! The next week I’m straining to follow conversation for more than five minutes. Well-worn explanations include: the heat, those iron pills I’m taking, whatever Mercury’s doing, and sobriety.

This month’s scheme: total immersion! Except, of course, for really technical conversations, moments of fatigue, or, ahem, this blog. My American but french-speaking husband will indulge me, my colleagues will coddle me, my friends will be startled (or not) as to how truly un-clever I can be.

So watch this space for updated accounts of french foible-ing, and remind me from time to time about how great life will be once I fit into those jeans.

Vive la France!

I live in France.

On a recent trip to Turkey, this declaration prompted a delicious poppy seed celebration of France on flatbreat.

In the United States, by contrast, this divulgence is generally greeted by one of the following reactions:

1) “Don’t they hate us?” Most often asked by males owning multiple golf shirts and at least one SUV. Likes: freedom, Fogerty, the fetus. Dislikes: my own stuck-up ass.

2) “French women don’t get fat, right?” This question is invariably posed by women and often as a pretext to recite some morsel from the best-selling book of the same title.

3) “France is dead.” More specifically, Paris is too expensive, too self-satisfied, too bobo to hold the attention of real artists (Berlin) and adventurers (Bogotá).

4) “…………….” Silence is the most common response to any discussion of current residence. This is true even among close friends and family members. I briefly considered halitosis as the culprit – perhaps folks just wanted me to cut the story short so that they could start breathing again. With the passage of time and much Listerine, however, I’ve come to favor an alternate explanation – that people just don’t know what to ask.

I touched down in Paris yesterday, determined after a three-week Midwestern jaunt to put an end to all this. The details that can’t be conjured keg-side (“How’s France?”) will be dissected here for the viewing pleasure of loved ones and strangers. Perhaps I’ll learn a thing or two in the process and gain a better understanding about this hateful/skinny/bobo paradise that I’ve unwittingly adopted.

It couldn’t hurt, right?