... as I was saying

About to observe yet another effing birthday. Can't really prognosticate much about it, because, honestly, I haven't given it much thought aside from wondering if the GITB will come through and deliver the new Sprinsgteen CD.

And I have been traveling my ass off this month, to L.A.for a week, home for about 18 hours then off to Scottsdale for another week. Still swimming around in the corporate cesspool and at this point it's tolerable only because I know I'm making decent money for what I do and the market in which I live. Plus we have a kid in college and that aint cheap, sister. So banking as much green as we can, what with now being at the top of our earning power and all that shit, because, you know, we will be dead soon.

I have decided it's time to ditch my 20-something-year-old Target suitcase now that the handles are starting to come off and the zipper keeps jamming. It makes me a little sad. That dark green rolling shitbox has been on a lot of trips with me, pretty much around the world twice. I can't imagine how truly filthy it is, now that I think about it. I have stripped all the tags and crap off of it and it's parked in the kid's room at the moment but I will need to move it soon because she will be coming home for Eastover next weekend. I thought about donating it to Goodwill but the thing is, the shit that is wrong with it will be just as annoying to a poor person as it is to me, so fuck it.

So I think what I will do is give it the send-off it deserves: burial at sea. I don't do cruises, so while the green shitbox has been on trains and planes from here to Paris, it's never been seafaring, and that's just not fair, so what the hell, I think I will drive to the top of the John's Pass Bridge one of these nights and toss it over the guardrail. And then I will jump in my car and speed off like a criminal leaving the scene of a crime, because, you know, that part will be true.

half a centenarian

How the fuck did this happen? It appears that while I have been preoccupied with raising the coolest teenager ever, walking the dog, finishing grad school, picking up boxers off the bedroom floor with my toes (I am quite gifted at times), teaching, writing, and trying to be a good and helpful daughter, supportive sister, tolerant spouse, loyal friend, productive employee, and sort of vegetarian, I have very nearly made it to the half-century mark. I had no plans to celebrate the event which is not until the end of the month, but my girl-gang of middle-aged party animals decided to storm my house Saturday evening as I sat on the couch in stained sweatpants and a sports bra eating a tomato salad and watching Keeping up with the Kardashians (oh the shame). They actually blindfolded me and threw me into a stretch limo (after a quick costume change and slap of make-up) and took me on an abbreviated "This is Your Life" bar crawl that began at the diviest dive bar on St. Pete Beach and ended with me insisting that we pull over so I could barf on the side of the road early Sunday morning while White Snake's "Here I go Again" pounded on the stereo. All I can say is that I'm glad I'm still here, I am a lucky girl to have the friends and family I have and to have made it to 50 (almost)with most of my parts still intact. What's next?

I have been reading this book for the past couple of weeks -- picked it up after I heard the author being interviewed on NPR and found myself captivated by her voice as she read:

First Night

"I first saw Harold across a crowded room, but it was lunchtime, not some enchanted evening, and we did not speak. I was having lunch in the Etoile restaurant in Charlotte Street; my companion pointed to a trio of men lunching opposite us. They were in fact Robert Shaw, Donald Pleasance and Harold; they were discussing Robert’s play, The Man in the Glass Booth, in which Harold would direct Donald. My companion admired Robert Shaw intensely: the handsome red-headed star who was said to do his own stuntwork and embodied machismo. Apparently I said thoughtfully: ‘I’ll take the dark one.’"

Other than that, I'm fine, how are you?

Here's what's new: I find that getting rid of stuff turns me on more than acquiring anything ever has. I feel lighter and lighter with each "release" and somehow smarter as I let go of things. My daughter's best friend is moving into her own apartment -- not going away to college as she has an absentee father and a drug-addicted mother so there's no money for college other than the community type and just enough dysfunction the past ten years to keep her from excelling in school so there is no hope of scholarship money either -- but anyway. I have delighted in passing along to her things that I have been hanging onto for reasons I don't know. So she gets the diaphanous sheer curtains and the set of coffee mugs I never drank from and the set of plates my husband bought for reasons I could never figure out and likewise never used because they were too large to fit in the dishwasher and too heavy to not hurt my wimpy old lady wrists. So they squatted, a glaring pile of green ceramic squares, taking up space on a shelf and annoying me every time I looked at them. Now gone! Yay!

Lately I just want to purge, purge, purge and spend my money on experiences. So I have been packing in a lot of travel lately, business and pleasure, but spending money and going first class, taking in the sights, eating in stupidly expensive places, drinking lots of wine or drinks with fancy names, flirting with my colleagues -- New York for Thanksgiving, then off to the Keys for New Year's, in Seattle last week, to Scottsdale next month, Charlotte a few weeks after that. The kid and I are also planning a trip to Italy this summer to celebrate her high school graduation. I find myself feeling at home in airports, wallowing in the metaphor, inhaling the Cinnabon and judging people by the size of the luggage they consider to be appropriate carry-on baggage.

My favorite airports this month so far: Denver because I so enjoyed all the guys strutting around in cowboy hats as well as the number of people galumping around their gate areas on crutches (ski novices?) and Charlotte because they have fabulous white rocking chairs in which to plop and rock away while waiting for your connection back to steamy, green Tampa.

up the down hallway

I have been teaching part-time for about a year, splitting my time between two local schools -- a community college and a small, private liberal arts college. Because the classes are in the evening, my students tend to be a little bit older, they have jobs and sometimes families.

The similarities stop there, though. The students from the private school are preening and self-absorbed. They have excellent educational backgrounds and are therefore fairly sophisticated in their analysis of literature and their level of critical thinking. But their egos are tedious and their certainty that they have all the answers is, well, not much fun. The community college students are more of a challenge for me in terms of their hesitancy to ask questions, but the diversity among my students is such a delight -- I have students from Nigeria, China, Moldova, Russia, Portugal and Brazil and their enthusiastic engagement with the likes of Poe, Melville, Faulkner, Fitzgerald and Hawthorne is indeed humbling.

They want to know who these writers were, what their lives were like and why they chose to write the stories that we now wrestle with in the classroom. In contrast, their classmates, students who were born and raised in the U.S., are checked out, bored and going through the motions in order to cross this mandatory class off their degree plans so that they can move on to their core (bullshit) business course which will of course lead them to business degrees and jobs later on making the big bucks wallowing around in the corporate cesspool. Thank goddess for my fabulous foreign students who are not foreign at all. They are kindred spirits to me and in a way, living breathing links to my past -- I look at them and wonder if my distant relatives who first came to America in the early years of the the 20th century were as filled with awe as the students who grace my classroom each evening. I hope so. I like to think so.

1978

Dear Bruce, Darkness on the Edge of Town made me fall in love with you. That album set me off on a binge of dark-haired boys with serious cases of chronic malcontent and pretty eyes that has yet to abate. Sigh. 

Pretty. Badass.

There's a 1,000 year-old Indian Mound in my neighborhood that historians say the Tocabaga Indians spent a few hundred years building from discarded clam and oyster shells. The mound is 20-feet high and rests on the waterfront. It's shaded by sighing oaks whose arms are draped with showers of Spanish moss festooned with tiny air plants. From a distance the plants look like bows decorating a girl's long hair.

A park has risen around the neighborhood mound and it's protected as sacred land. It's only inhabitants are a gang of peacocks who apparently feel completely entitled to hassle whomever they choose, including some pretty testy tom cats. The peacocks also sometimes strut out into the road and nonchalantly hold traffic in both directions hostage until they grow bored and wander back over to the park. In all the years I have lived here, I have never heard of a peacock being hit by a car. And I have never seen a cat or dog prevail in a stare-down contest. As you can see in this picture, the peas get mighty peeved when one of their homies is affronted by a flea-bitten four-legger and they are quick to assemble their bad selves in an impressive show of force.

Things I did at work today:

Sat through a mind-numbingly tedious meeting with my clueless bumbling boss
Confirmed for the millionth time that my boss is indeed a douche
Requested official transcripts from both my colleges
Printed receipts of those transactions
Ladies room
Balanced both my checkbooks
Logged onto Facebook a few times
Read my work e-mail (boring)
Read my personal e-mail (not so boring)
Read my friend's blog and got caught up on the last few weeks of her saga du jour
Talked to my brother twice
Exchanged texts with my daughter
Went to Evos for lunch with a co-worker
Rearranged my desk
Rearranged my messenger bag
Updated my status on Facebook
Drafted my letter of resignation
:)

I don't have oceans of money in which to roll

But some of my friends do which means they have real estate that they don't occupy full time. So when my friends with money/real estate to spare offer to give me the keys to the shack in the mountains, I'm all hell yeah. Seven days in the mountains, just me and Miss Daisy -- very positive. Just what I needed.

We loaded up a minivan’s worth of nieces this past Saturday and trucked it up to Weekie Wacheee to hang out with the mermaids. Much to my delight, it was “Mermaids of Yesteryear” weekend, so we were treated to an extra special matinee show of mermaids who swam the springs back in the 1940s and up through the decades of the last century(!) – the youngest of the bunch hung up her tail (temporarily) in the late 1970s.

The three coolest parts about the show were these: (1) one of the mermaids reminisced about the day she swam for Elvis back in the 1950s and she still blushed when she talked about how dreamy he was as a soft-spoken 22-year-old. She is 70, by the way. (2) the turtles who live in the spring seemed to be totally into the music because whenever the mermaids “danced,” turtles splashed down into the lagoon and merrily dove and dipped and paddled with the mermaids who were forced to give them gentle nudges and send them back the opposite direction when the little guys interfered with their choreography. (3) The senior citizen mermaids were vivacious and sure of themselves and this made their performances more enjoyable than that of the firm, nubile 20-something cast of “The Little Mermaid” whom we saw earlier in the day.

the cold snap we had for nearly two weeks has finally receded. I enjoyed the change at first but after two days it was getting old and I missed the sun and quickly grew sick to death of all the belly-aching on the local news, in the supermarket, at work, etc. about how COLD it was and everyone kept whining: "But this is Flooooorida...."

I packed away all the extra quilts yesterday and hung the winter coats back in the hall closet, carefully winding the scarfs around the necks of each coat just in case the cold comes back for another quick visit before March when we can repack in earnest, tucking flowery dryer sheets between seldom-worn sweaters and fleece sweatshirts and such. Then I spent most of Sunday wandering around the yard oh-shitting over the melted plants in the butterfly garden. They look like someone took a flamethrower to them -- the pentas are black and incinerated and pitched to one side or the other, the bougainvilleas are falling over in drunken heaps, their fuchsia petals dissolving into puddles of primordial ooze on the brown (dead) grass. The lizards are back lounging on the deck but the rabbits that live underneath have yet to reappear. And I'm afraid to look too hard for the dragonflies and butterflies, which used to hover in cloudy swarms of yellow and pink and violet, dropping kisses on their favorite blossoms, strafing the gardenia tree, then coming back for more. Winter sucks.

happy new year! you're fired!

So we had yet another hideous round of layoffs at my workplace this week. The worst part about being half-assedly in management (I am sometimes in the know but am not invited to the pow-wows or really give a crap about being in on all the executive strategy meetings because they bore me to death and I cannot conceal this. Just tell me what you've decided, and I'll go from there) is knowing about shit like this ahead of time. The last round of lay-offs was in April and went down while I was in Paris. So the folks who lost their jobs then were suspicious that I knew ahead of time and went to Paris anyway, and was lounging around some outdoor cafe overlooking the Seine when the anvil was dropped on their heads. As a matter of fact, I did not know for certain ahead of time. I knew there was a chance but in the current economy there's always the chance right? The second day I was in France I stupidly checked my e-mail and read the series of frantic messages from my boss to call him ASAP. Thinking there was no way in the world there could be any such thing as an actual editorial emergency I called him from a glass cube phone booth overlooking the Seine and Notre Dam. It was a much longer (and more expensive) call than I anticipated. As I stood there absorbing the news that most of my longtime co-workers were about to be fired I felt very detached because it all seemed so far away (it was, and also it was 8 p.m. Paris-time and I had been drinking, which helps with the distance thing). The call cost me $127 because I charged it, not thinking it would be smart to buy an international calling card just in case I needed to return an urgent emergency call from the editorial dept. while I was away.

Anyway, when I returned from the April trip some of my newly unemployed former co-workers asked me specifically if I knew about the lay off before I left on my trip. And why that point was such an issue, I still can't understand. Would I have gone on the trip anyway had I known? Yes. The tickets were nonrefundable and our CEO is intractable. There is no talking him out of anything, everyone who knows him even a little bit knows this to be true.

Flash-forward nine months. It's a week before Christmas. My boss tells me that a layoff is in the offing, probably a week or two after the holidays. I am torn. Do I give one or two of my closer work friends a heads up and ruin the holidays for them or do I sit by silently while they party ($$$) and shop ($$$) as if they have jobs after January 2010? I said nothing. It sucked knowing, I wish I hadn't known, it made a rather dark holiday even darker. In short, it blew. And of course, I threw myself into the exercise in futility of trying to advocate for a few of my colleagues who we really need and who did not deserve to be let go. The boss was willing to discuss saving anyone I suggested as long as I had another employee I would rather see go (I guess he's seen Sophie's Choice). Nice, huh?

The most painful cut was a co-worker who has been out of state for 10 days or so dealing with the impending death of a critically ill family member. The co-worker saw the torrent of e-mails that went 'round following Monday's layoffs and assumed the coast was clear -- no phone calls or e-mails had come in summoning the co-worker to return to the office ASAP so imagine the shock when the co-worker returned to work yesterday just in time for a staff meeting only to be pulled aside and let go. Part of the layoff, yes, but we figured it would be unkind to do it long distance over the phone while you sit in a hospital room. So we're glad you're back and that your relative seems to be hanging in there for now. By the way, your position has been eliminated.

Being in the next room when this went down and watching my devastated co-worker stagger out the door sucked. It was way better to be in a glass phone booth in Paris, looking at Notre Dam and drawing stick figures in the patches of fog that I breathed on the glass as my boss rambled about "restructuring" and "going forward."

I dreaded the first Thanksgiving without my mom so much that I ditched the extended family ritual and ran away to Europe for the second time in 2009. Thanksgiving does not exist in Europe and it was a relief to walk down a street and see no hint whatever of turkeys or pilgrims or doors festooned with raffia-bundled ears of Indian corn.

I spent the 25th eating Thai food and washing it down with icy pints of 1664 with the coolest teenager ever. We spent days walking and pausing to look closer at some things and to take pictures of others. We threw caution to the wind and actually ate the beans and salty slabs of pork that came with our eggs at breakfast and enjoyed the ambiance of the basement breakfast room of the B&B that included the loud arguments of the Bulgarian cooks, which were always broken up (much to our disappointment) by the big Greek man who owns the B&B. We visited with some of my students who are in the study abroad program this semester and I made up my mind once and for all to put my name on the list to start teaching one semester in London each year starting in 2011 when my sweet schmoopie leaves for college.

I carried some of my mom's ashes with me throughout the trip. I had intended to scatter them from the Eiffel Tower the night before we returned home, which is what my dad wanted, but when the moment came I couldn't do it. I can't explain why, I just couldn't. So the ashes came home with me. The day after we got back my dad called me up and said "You brought Mom's ashes back with you, didn't you?" I have no idea how he knew. It wasn't like I had protested scattering her remains in Paris in the first place -- I thought it was a fine thing to do. But I couldn't let them go and he knew it before I did.

one of my youthful co-workers made this new avatar for me for our oh-so-annoyingly-distracting interoffice IM app. I hate the whole IM thing. Our boss thinks it keeps us connected and therefore much more engaged with one another and team-oriented. Yay team. Go team go. I don't want to be on IM all damn day long (I'm WORKING for chrissake), I don't care what music my colleagues are listening to, nor do I care when they log on and off, but I am notified of this whether I want to be or not which is really obnoxious and the fault of our hyper-paranoid head of IT dood who set everyone's PCs to time out after 10 minutes of idleness so goddess-forbid you get into a meaningful conversation with an actual human being who is standing in the same room with you, or go grab a cup of joe in the next room -- everyone knows you were slacking off because the damnable IM thingie sets off little bells and whistles every time one logs back on. So basically it looks like all I do all day long is log back on. I resorted to setting my status to "busy"in order to avoid pop-ups from my chatty co-workers and to dodge my boss who sends me dumbass IMs such as "you there?" That's worked for about two weeks. No one seems to have noticed. My strategy is to work my way down the list of status options as needed. Next radio button on the list is "on a call" and the way I see it, no one is going to challenge me on that one, because, you know, I'm on a call. It would be uncool to interrupt.

And what of my absence of low these 7 months or so? Several reasons. One is the fact that a creepy stalker who resides in Tampa hits my blog pretty much every 24 hours which is beyond sad for that person and just plain annoying to me. To that Tampon (and you know who you are): Get a fucking life. The other explanations for my absence: too unpleasant to discuss.

Day 2: Amok in Par-ee

Oh, hello, I'm back. Sorry about that. Where were we?

Ah, yes -- day 2.

Grace and I sat up half the night talking and drinking red wine until we finally collapsed. She left for work early the next morning -- she bravely cycles 45 minutes or so to her job at the International Herald Tribune -- and I wandered around the apartment trying to get organized. I finally made it out the door in time for the rain to start which was fine, the blue-grey canopy over the city was a welcome contrast to the blinding brightness of home.

I followed Grace's directions and made it onto the Metro without incident. What I noticed right off is that the people of Paris truly dress -- as in they wear real clothing. There was not a t-shirt, nor a pair of sweats, sneakers or flip-flops on a single soul, and I really looked. Even the guys who looked to me like they might be more blue-collar workers wore closed-toe leather shoes and nice shirts or light sweaters and nearly everyone sported a scarf in some form or fashion -- men and women alike. Another unexpected detail: The Metro is very quiet. People really don't interact; there's very little eye contact and any chatting is whispered or completely inaudible. It made people-watching a little more challenging, but nonetheless I watched and took note and I'm glad I did because I noticed that people exiting the train stood with their fingers looped around a metal latch that had to be flipped up in order to open the doors. I certainly didn't want to call attention to myself by an outburst of undignified wrestling with the door latch, so the intrusive people-watching paid off. When we stopped at the the Palais Royal-Musee de Louvre I was able to disembark and not look like a complete moron. Which is always nice.

I had planned to spend my first full day in Paris in the Louvre but I was so taken by the exterior that I actually spent the entire day wandering around the courtyards and gardens. My pace was leisurely to the point that I really did completely lose track of time. I stared at the statues that line the main courtyard of men who participated in the design and construction of the palace and particularly became enamored by this astronomer hottie, Cassini. After ogling him for a bit I wandered beyond the grounds of the Louvre and visited the carousel, had some coffee and a croissant, and sat in the grass with a statue of Venus for a while as I breathed in the quiet and the smell of the blossoming trees mixed with the soft, misty rain. I eventually strolled all the way up to the Arch de Triomphe and back and realized I needed to head back to the apartment to meet Grace for dinner. I planned to go back to the Louvre the next day and actually go inside this time. But first, an evening in Paris awaited.

Paris, day 1

After dragging my suitcase off the narrow wooden tube of a lift, I dragged it down three steps of primeval oak stairs covered with a red Persian runner, then around a corner, up a few more stairs to a hairpin turn and yet another flight of spiraling stairs. I could hear Grace’s kitty, Mystic, mewing as I trudged and huffed and bumped up the last few steps, fumbled interminably with the keys, then spilled into the foyer in a burst when the lock finally turned. Mystic skittered around a corner and I followed, dropping my gear and stepping out of my shoes without stopping as I headed for where the toilet must be. I found the kitchen, living room, bedroom and the place I assumed I would be able to pee, the room through the bedroom where I could see a sink and a tub. Imagine my surprise when I stumbled into the room, my zipper already down, to find no toilet. I turned around at least three times to make sure. Nope. No toilet. Back through the apartment I went with Mystic following, mewing and threading himself between my feet as I looked for the elusive porcelain throne upon which I desperately needed to perch.

I opened every closet door in the apartment with increasing panic and finally, there it was, the most beautiful toilet ever in its own little peach-colored closet with triangular walls and ceiling. I have no idea what the deal is with the French locating their toilets in a separate room and often on the opposite side of the house from the rest of the plumbing, but it’s a little weird and annoying, especially since I really do like to wash my hands after using the toilet. I felt like Frankenstein walking around the apartment with my arms out in front of me as I hurried back to the other side to wash my hands since using the kitchen sink would be gross.

Afterwards I drank a beer and collapsed on the bed and when I woke a few hours later, Mystic was settled in next to me, his body curled around my arm, his tail on my cheek.

Grace burst through the door about an hour later and after screams and hugs and a lot of laughing she said she had just gotten a call on her cell from her doctor whose office is right around the comer, offering to reschedule Grace’s earlier appointment which she had canceled. We flew around the apartment and grabbed jackets and wallets then down the stairs and out onto the street, my first evening in Paris. Grace’s doctor’s office was indeed just a short walk from the apartment and I was happy to tag along, curious to see what French medicine looks like. The fact that her doctor would see her at 6:30 in the evening impressed me. The office was tiny and very utilitarian but decorated in warm, sunny melon tones with lots of stainless steel. There was no receptionist or nurse, just the doctor, who greeted Grace warmly and went right to working on the fitting of the orthotics she made for Grace’s shoes.

As I sat and looked around the room, Grace launched into a torrent of French to which the doctor responded. I sat there with my mouth hanging open. The fitting/conversation went on for 15 minutes or so with Grace carrying on not like a girl from Queens at all. Who was this creature? She got on a plane not so long ago armed with just her ballsiness that I so admire, her cat carrier in one hand, her heart in the other. She spoke no French. Now she’s speaking it with a Parisian accent, albeit with a bit of New York thrown in. Wow.

After the meeting with the doctor, we strolled to a café and sat at a table on the sidewalk and ordered ice cold pints of 1664 blonde ale and I smoked one of her Dunhills. The waiter, Pasqual, was a delightful little bald guy with an impressive beard and quick wit but body odor that about knocked me out. But no matter. As I leaned back and looked around Grace reached across the tiny round table and clinked my glass and said “We’re in fucking PARIS!!!”

What a long strange (wonderful!!) trip

The first few days I was in Paris are sort of a blur.

I do remember the ride to the airport and standing in line to check my one bag packed with just a few changes of clothes for two weeks and lots of items from home that Grace was craving -- jars of Tiger Balm, bags of raw cashews and dried blueberries, which she can easily get in Paris, but they are very expensive. I also toted a jar of jalapeno jelly which my mom cans each year from peppers in her garden, a fancy bottle of Tupelo honey with a long elegant neck that was as large as a wine bottle, an edible honeycomb, and a wine bottle opener shaped like a hopping toad. I waited behind two brothers who were returning to Nigeria with 14 suitcases between them. I was curious about what was in all those bags, surely two guys wouldn't be hauling over a dozen bags filled with clothes (or an entire suitcase devoted to shoes and boots as one of my fashion-conscious girlfriend's routinely checks). The bags were filled with items requested from their friends and family members at home, mostly small electronics like MP3 players and toiletries, the men told me. They had pretty much cleared out a few Wal-Marts, they said. I asked how long it would take before they actually walked through the door of their homes. About 36 hours of solid traveling using a variety of modes, the final leg utilizing a cart drawn by cattle, they told me proudly. Wow. My solo jaunt to visit Grace seemed pretty pansy-ish after hearing that.

I sat on the plane next to a pair of very sweet and young newlyweds from Utah. They did not have physical contact with each other once that I noticed during the 10-or so hours in the air. Again I say wow. The ride to Grace's apartment was interesting because the cab driver did not really speak English and my French sucks. He did glean that I was American and beamed at me as he said haltingly: "Obama -- America!!!! George Bush-- NOT America!!!!" I got what he was saying and we smiled and nodded at each other a lot and when he let me out in front of Grace's building he kissed my hand and bowed. It was sweet. Grace had sent me very specific and detailed instructions on how to get into her place which made me feel like a secret agent:

"The zip code is important, because it tells them I live in the 15th arrondisement; all Paris zip codes are 750, then the last two numbers are the particular section, or arrondisement. Mine is the 15th.

I will probably have left for work before you arrive, unfortunately. But the van will drop you off at my door (take a print out of this email and the email I forwarded on van service with the reservation number).

At my building (a corner building; there's a bakery directly across the street from the front of the building; if your facing my door, to your right across a smaller street will be a motorcycle repair shop), there's a numeric code to open the outside door (a black grill door w/glass plating). The external code is: 19-A-68.

Enter the building, and you'll see rows of mailboxes to your right. My mailbox, with my family name on in, is on the first row closest to the door, second or third from the top. Open the box, and I will have keys for you inside.

There's a black oval key -- totally black, it's more like a black oval plastic thing than a key -- will get you in the second, internal door. There's a keypad just beyond the mailboxes on the same wall; it has all the names of the apartment's occupants on it, and just below a black circular pad. Touch the black oval key lightly to the black circular pad, and you'll get a green light (if you get a red light, try again). The green light means the inner door is open.

Walk through the inner door, and you'll see a little elevator in front of you (it's a real french-style elevator, with an iron grate door to open, and small). Stuff your luggage inside and take it the top 5th floor. Exit on the fifth floor and walk about 3 steps down, then jog left, and walk up two flights to the top and 7th floor, dragging your luggage with you (unfortunately). My door is the first door you get to at the top of the stairs on the 7th floor. The name on the doorbell is Isabelle LaClaire. (yes, my french alter-ego; otherwise known as the woman who owns the apartment).

Use the silver key with black spots on it to open my apartment door. Go in and make yourself comfortable. The bed is yours; I'll have put fresh sheets on it and left towels for you to take a shower or whatever you wish. Wine will be chilling in the fridge (along with some beer). They'll be some cheese and sausage to snack on. And, of course, there's the bakery just across the street, which makes excellent croissants, pain du chocolate, and whatever else you need..."

Thus began my Parisian adventure. More later but I leave you with a photo of the infamous elevator in Grace's 100+ year-old building. It's gorgeous, tiny, and it works beautifully. But I often thought as I rode up and down in it that if it were to stop between floors and break down, there would really be no way to get out of it because it truly is like an iron cage the size of a casket. Creepy but pretty.

oui

Paris is everything I dreamed and more. So much more.

Crude, angry, politically incorrect, chain-smoking and sophomoric = dreamy. I am counting the days until Rescue Me returns to FX. Yes, yes, I know, I am a sad excuse for a feminist.

My trip to Paris is a month away and I cannot wait. I have done plenty of solo traveling but Tampa to Paris is a new one for me. My efforts to acclimate myself to the French language have been limited to changing the setting on my ipod to French. But of course, when looking for particular tracks they are all spelled in English so it's kind of not all that effective. But listening to Piaf sing La Vie en Rose every night as I walk the dog is really getting me in the mood. Grace and I are planning a tour of the Burgundy region and my travel editor wants me to do a night bike tour of Paris so there will be fun that is also subsidized. Who said a liberal arts education is worthless?