Bienvenue à New York

Secretly (more on this below) arriving at JFK airport at 6pm on a Tuesday, I pass through customs with barely a glance from the official guarding the entry to my homeland, grab my 50 lb suitcase and lumber my way to the Manhattan-bound A train.

I take my seat, whereupon I immediately start Murphy's Law-laughing as I realize I've just sat in something that I fervently hope isn't pee. Welcome back to NYC, kK!

****

Two hours later I am bumping my baggage up the steps of St. James Gate, a bar down the street from my sister's apartment. I order a Guinness, half of which goes down the hatch in one sweet gulp. Five minutes later an unsuspecting Willis walks in, thinking her boyfriend is taking her for drinks with one of his old college buddies. Cue majestic orchestral music, slo mo running, and a grunt from my admittedly strong sis as she tries to pick me up over my cries of "too many croissants! too many croissants!"

I am now back in America, land of great crap tv, verbs created out of nouns, and that greatest of all inventions, Goo Gone.

I will not miss:

*Insincere apologies.

GAH! You know, not everything is 'just bien' if you smash into me and spill my hot wine all over my jacket as long as you say "oh, pardon..."in a fake-contrition laden voice...no! It's NOT bien! GET ME A NAPKIN you **bleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep**

*Bedrooms so cold I'm forced to sleep in a scarf and long underwear

*Never quite belonging

*Bread not on a bread plate. I'm just sayin'.

*Oddly enough, coffee. OK, so the George V made a mean cafe creme, but at the price of my firstborn child, well, I'll just take Pain Quotidien bowl o' lait any day, and OH YEAH, there are about 800 PQs in New York City, so there! 

I will miss:

*BREAD: Croissants and baguettes

*FOOD: Eggs, vegetables

*Falafal

*Morning coffee and chats with Madame

*Loving America (why is it easier when you're away?)

*Perfect lighting, in that more-shadows-than-light way

*Being an exotic dinner party commodity for la noblesse (LOL!)

*20 Euro-a-month for ALL YOU CAN SEE MOVIES. Including new releases! Sneriously, WTF, and why is that not in play HERE.

***

As Dr. Dumber so aptly documented earlier this year: "Number 1 on my 2010 to-do list: Figure out my life plan!" Well, if anybody has any suggestions for me...hahahaha! Yar, as much as we all know how well-suited I am to
teaching, I think I might prefer to be a hermit. (Do you get paid for that? I guess only if you're someone whose initials are JD Salinger...)

I thought, and I know many of my friends and family thought, that Paris would be "it" for me, that I would never go back to America, at least not in the foreseeable future. I was sort of broadsided by the realization that I actually want, and am ready, to live in America (specifically Seattle, of course). It will rip out my heart to leave, but Paris is in my system for now and always, just like it should be. Paris has given me myself, and I don't think any other place in the world could have done that at this perfectly timed moment in my strange life.

Living in Paris has helped me find a very welcome balance--I know now what I want my life to be like and, more importantly, I know how to make that happen. Letting go of even the silliest thing, like guilt over not going out with friends and instead staying inside to watch an entire season of 30 Rock. Roasting some sweet potatoes and brussels sprouts for dinner. Saying 'yes' to an occasional night of dancing. Reading lots of library books, in an actual library. Watching the rain. Baking with spices that make the kitchen smell like magic. Listening to NPR music podcasts. Weekly acupuncture. The 86-year-old-man Club. Rubbing soft kitty bellies. Walking in the rain. Working a job, dealing with the stress, drinking coffee, surrounding myself with only the best, genuinely good people I have met/will meet. Listening to the rain.

Life is not perfect, bad times are usually lurking and waiting for their opportunity to jump up and drag us down. Sometimes it's good to wallow in the muck, the horrible misery, the deep dark nothing of numbness. But I always know, somewhere in my depths, that left to their own devices, goodness and light will rise up again, cleaning away the slime of sadness and dispersing into invisible mist the unbearable weight of despair.

I know I will suffer some of the usual anxieties, sometimes waste too much energy worrying about something stressful, but I have cut down on the amount of times I let these feelings overwhelm me.

I will remember to breathe.
I will eat foods that make me happy.
I will feel alone without feeling lonely.
I will throw back my head and laugh.
I will not feel guilty.
I will watch fabulous late night movies like Scorpion King Part Deux.
I will feel in my blood every single moment for the rest of my life the play of shadows on the Hotel de Ville at night. The glint of gold off Les Invalides. The smell of the best baguette in Paris. The melting of the gooey chocolate as I pour in hot milk at the cafe on Ile St Louis. The coldness of the beer at the Hash stop at Versailles and my burning legs wrapped in a red dress running through the streets of Paris. The taste of my first dish of root veggies and glass of raw milk.

I will enjoy the rain.

kK

When the lights...go out...in the toilet

Well, one of the perks of being a teacher, assistant or otherwise, is that you can use the REAL toilets near the teachers' lounge. (Really, I don't understand why they can't just put seats on all the toilets! Us girls ain't askin' for much, now, are we?!) There's really nothing else I really needed to say about this, but I just had a quick flashback [spoiler alert: eye muffs, to all you sensitives with "tmi" on the tips of your tongues] to one time when I had to spend a little *extra* time in this quaint room, and the automatic lights went out b/c I guess they thought no one was still in there and wanted to save electricity, so I had to sit there waving my arms frantically back and forth like I was trying to catch someone's attention before they got run over by a car crossing the street.

So I think I might have mentioned my new best friend, Monsieur Hot Pink Juicer (sorry Dumber...you've been replaced by a machine*). On my worst days he cheers me up by promising a magical mixture of whatever I choose to throw at him. Squash kindly provided the recipe for my all-time favorite: carrots, apples, ginger (AND LOTS OF IT), spinach, and lime. YUM!!!

Monsieur Hot Pink Juicer, surrounded by his lovely ladies Carrotte, Pomme, Citron Vert, Gingembre, et Epinard

There is seriously nothing better in the morning (or any time of day, really) than a cup of strong coffee, a piece of buttery toast (my palate raises its nose and disdainfully sniffs at anything less than President-quality), and a glassful of nasty-lookin' but fan-friggin-TASTIC tasting happiness-in-a-can-baby! I'm bringing it back to the States with me when I leave, even if I have to throw out all my clothes to make room for him in my suitcase (just kidding, sort of), and EVEN THOUGH I'll have to use an adapter EACH AND EVERY TIME I USE IT. That's right. I hearts my juicer.
(He'd take a bow, but he's busy getting some beauty rest.)

Speaking of rest...[kK tangent 2684] I think it's about time to head to the library. While I don't think they'll have acquired the new Jasper Fforde yet, I did see some tasty nuggets in the sci fi/fantasy section (down in the depths of the stacks...it's like a dungeon down there! but at least my little space friends have Biography/History for companions, lol!). If I'm lucky I'll get a spot on one of the two couches, where up to four strangers can get really cozy trying to share half of each bench cushion while pretending not to notice (or notice and pretend not to judge) each other's reading materials. I love taking naps in the library! I'll just be reading along and...zzzz...
[possible end to kK Tangent 2684]

I really can't be bothered to say anything else...my entire brain is taken up with anticipation of having another glass of Green Power.
kK
[*what! YOU'RE Dumber and I'M Dumb! Or have I been upgraded to Stupid Idiot?]

Bread on a bread plate? QUEL HORREUR

C'est too much, is what it is. C'est TOO MUCH.

After yet another dinner party chez Squash thrown by one of her roommates, I have now learned that Parisians put their piece of baguette at a 45 degree angle to the left-hand side of the bread plate, straight onto the friggin table cloth, completely ignoring the perfectly lovely bread plate sitting right in front of them that is apparently only supposed to host after-dinner cheese.

I mean, wtf.

How does that even make sense? It's DIFFICULT to clean off a tablecloth. At least if you put crumbs on a bread plate you can wipe them off pretty easily into the sink or trash or whatever. Have you ever tried wiping off bread crumbs from a cloth on the table? Yeah, they jump all over the place and don't like gathering into a nice little pile, and you end up having to scrape them with a special scraper or pick them up one by one with your fingers, or laboriously take off the table cloth and shake it out, which means you then have to sweep up the fallen crumbs from the floor. Or I guess you could just leave them on the table cloth and hope someone else cleans them up. Like a housecleaner, or maybe some visiting pigeons.

OK, so maybe it's not all French people, but wowsers, the ones who gathered around the table Thursday night were the stuffiest, pompous-iest peeps I have ever met. Squash and I decided not to try too hard to converse with them, so we sat next to each other and LAUGHED OUT LOUD at our own franglais-ed jokes and the shitty attitude of one of the pregnant dinner guest who was very obviously pissed that we were having so much fun while she had to sit there being pregnant and serious and French. humph.

But the food was great, as always (Carole is a friggin MASTER of the kitchen!) and it's always fun to have an opportunity to practice having real conversations in French, even if it's a conversation with people who just pointedly stared and whispered at your American savagery as you ate your bread off a bread plate.

kK

Party in the USA (thanks, Miley!)

(that's right, I listen to Miley Cyrus! Shut up! It's a good song! I dare you to try to hear it once and turn it off...oh yeah, YOU CAN'T.)

HA! Just finished la fete de thanksgiving in Paris!! Thursday night 17 people crowded elbows around the magical-expanding table chez Squash and drank, ate, and franglais-ed the night away. The turkey was fresh from the Brittany countryside (it literally had a head like two days before we put it in the oven) and so was the pumpkin...that's right, we made pumpkin pie from absolute scratch! And you know what? I liked it, but NOT AS MUCH AS I LIKE PUMPKIN OUT OF A CAN!! Am I a horrible person??!

But yar, every single dish was the most delicious yumminess I can ever imagine eating. I sous-chef'd for Squash on pumpkin pie, mashed potatoes, humus, and stuffing. Pull The Prick out made my personal favorite: corn casserole. YESSS! The flavors are so fantastic...even veggies taste like VEGGIES and don't need any seasonings to make them palatable! Holy crap, I already told Hoonie I was ordering all my food from France when I get back to America. They deliver, right?

I had a special treat all my own for Thanksgiving...my friends The Pollock (lol I love that I didn't even need to change her name to make it a good blome--and that would be 'blog name' to you plebes) and Oxford Comma came to town for a little visit!! I got to hear some office gossip (MAN some sh*t's been goin' DOWN since I left, lol!!) and get real hugs and laugh about being angry in New York. I was so happy I almost cried! (gawd, how embarrassing! heh heh)

The party was a smashing success...the Americans loved it b/c, well, we know how to throw good parties, and even the Brits and French were impressed b/c, well, WE THROW GOOD PARTIES. It feels good to let loose and relax a little, DOESN'T IT, you polite-and-reserved-delicately-sipping-on-wine-never-playing-rowdy-music peeps! And cheese DOES work as an appetizer, huh! We never got to show off the awesomeness of the cosmo-as-aperatif, but there was plenty of wine flowing. When we got to the wine that tasted like goat cheese smells, though, I was pretty much done. (don't even ask.)

So yeah, score one of my Puritan homies...you sure as shit didn't know how to feed yourselves when you got to the New World, but thanks for mooching off the natives and calling it tradition!

"GET YOUR HANDS UP...THERE'S A PARTY IN THE USA..."
heh heh

kK

No such thing as a free...toilet?

I swear, it is just about time I take myself to mechanic-stuff and plumbing-type school so I can fix all the *^$#@! objects that always *&^%$#@! break.

So my toilet broke. I call my concierge, the guy who takes care of the apt complex. He comes right away to fix it. Good as new. Totally awesome.

Two days later (as in, just a few minutes ago) I come home and find him still in the building (he usually leaves around 4 or 4.30 and it's definitely later than that right about now!) and he says that it was good I called him b/c if I'd called the agency who owns the building they'd have charged me 30 or 40 euros to fix it, but him, he fixes things for cheaper. This is all in French, mind you, and I'm really tired, so I sort of stare at him in a haze, like, what? Are you saying you want me to give you money? He was like, you know, give me whatever you want, like 20 euros or whatever. So I pull out the absolute last of my money, a 20 euro bill, and give it to him, in total shock. He's a lovely guy, my concierge...it must have been awkward for him to have to explain to me that I had to pay him, but now he's got some beer money, woohoo!

So lesson #435: Apartment maintenance in France = NOT free like it is in America. Score one for my homies! When does my teaching contract end, again? lol!

OK, off to a Turkish restaurant to stuff myself with...whatever Turkish people eat. My hash friend Late For Dinner is moving back to Turkey after a year of being in Paris, so we're having a goodbye party for her tonight. I plan on drinking beaucoup...maybe by the end of the night my broken toilet story will actually be funny!

kK