I Do Not Negotiate With Terrorists

I swear this is not posed. This is my life.

Yesterday was Wednesday. French kids don't have school on Wednesdays, which means that I spend all day on Wednesday trying to keep a small child from running into traffic or sticking his fingers in the stove. It's not as easy as it sounds.

I show up at V's at around 9 am on Wednesdays, and try to think of things for us to do. I asked V for some suggestions, because I was getting a bit tired of playing cars for ten hours straight, and she bought us tickets for some children's program at the Musée Quai Branly. Great! I thought. A museum sounds like fun. And so began the longest day of my life. Le Petit was certainly in fine form. He hadn't gotten much sleep the night before, and anyone who has ever spent any time with a three-year-old knows what that means. Everything from putting on his shoes, to getting in the elevator, to returning library books was an epic battle. 

"Tom, I'm putting your shoes on, we're going to the museum today."

Immediate tears.

"Regarder téléeeee!"

"No, Tom, come on. Here are your shoes."

"Ne veux paaaas!"

"Just give me your arm so I can put on your coat."

"Téléee!"

"Tom, it's time to go."

Wailing. Just wailing. It eventually stopped as I carried him into the elevator and got him into the stroller. I won't even go into the argument about putting up the stroller's roof thing so he wouldn't get rained on.

And then we got to the museum. And Le Petit was that kid. Why is my kid always that kid? I don't even have kids and my kid is always that kid. Just once I want to be one of those smug mothers or nannies with the perfectly behaved little munchkins who sit quietly and raise their hands to speak and don't put pipe cleaners in their mouths or steal the other kids' confetti. That would be so great.

But no. LP didn't stay in his seat. LP spoke out of turn. LP climbed things he wasn't supposed to climb. He shouted, he threw things, he tried to run away. To be fair, I think three is a bit young for a lecture on indigenous African art. But still, did he have to yell at the teacher? Finally exasperated, as LP is taking handfuls of the little shells everyone is supposed to get one of, I take him by the hands and ask him if he wants to leave. His little eyes light up.

"Oui!"

Okay great. Thank you madame, we'll be going now. And as we're retrieving our coats and the stroller from the cloak room, Le Petit takes off. Like starts running off into some dark corner never to be seen again. And when I capture him, he cries. And the coat check girls are just so sweet to him. 

"Qu'est-ce qu'il y a, cherie? Oh, why are you crying? It's okay. Poor little guy."

No! He's the bad guy here! Poor me! I am not mean! I am now one of those ladies you see at the grocery store, who's very nonchalantly dragging her bawling child down the cereal aisle. And you look at her and think, God what a horrible mother. I bet she beats that kid at home. But I just don't have time to reason with him right now! I have to get home because home means nap time!

Oh thank God for nap time. I fucking love nap time. I have time to clean up, take a little break, maybe eat something myself. I did the whole disgusting potty ritual, read him 2 stories, tucked him into bed, and went to make myself a cup of tea. But rather than the usual 3-4 hour naps he usually takes, little Damien only slept for about an hour and a half before he was crying to be let out again. And then we had to buy groceries and return the library books. And the whole screaming, crying, fit-having started again. My favorite part about the temper tantrums is when he hurls his pacifier in fury and then cries because he wants me to go pick it up. I think he seriously believes that if he just cries hard enough I'll let him watch TV all day. Well guess what, mister. I don't work that way. I am not intimidated by you. You can't just shriek a little and expect me to fold. No siree. I am an American, and we do not negotiate with terrorists. We are going to the goddamn library. 

We got to the library. And then to the grocery store. And he was adorable. I hate it when he's adorable when he's making me crazy. It's like when my dad and I would be fighting and then he'd make fun of me, but in a way that was legitimately so hilarious that I would start laughing. Meaning that I was laughing at myself when I was trying to be self-righteous. It's infuriating. So Le Petit was with me buying vegetables, and he wanted to help carry the basket. So he followed me around while dragging the basket behind me and helped me pick out potatoes for dinner. Ugh. It was really cute.

House Call

I had just settled Le Petit onto the couch, post-nap snack in hand, and was headed to the kitchen to get the Dustbuster ready, when the doorbell rang. At the door was a large, grinning French man who greeted me with a hearty "Bonjour!" I smiled, awkwardly, which is what I usually do when I'm expecting someone to begin speaking rapidly to me in French, which I will probably not understand.

"Habitez-vous ici?" he asked. Oh good, a short sentence.

"Well, um, I'm the au pair...."

"Yes, Madame asked me come here. I'm a doctor. I am ostéopathe. You know ostéopathe?"

"Oh, well..."

Meanwhile, Le Petit had come bounding over from the couch and was asking the doctor questions. Or rather, he asked the same question several times over. ("Monsieur? Monsieur? Monsieur? Pourquoi tu es ici? Pourquoi? Pourquoi? Monsieur?")

Monsieur was on the phone with V. "You want to talk to her?"

Yes please! It was indeed V on the other end.

"I'm sorry, Kate. I forgot to tell you. This is the doctor for your back. He is the best in France. You don't have to let him see you if you don't want. He will do Le Petit and me also. But he is the best and I think it is a good idea."

Sigh. Oh, what the hell. Sure, doc, why not? So I gave Le Petit another compote and turned on Disney Junior and went in for my first visit to a chiropractor. One I didn't exactly sign up for, by the way. You know how difficult it is to try to make small talk when you're at the dentist? Try keeping up a conversation when you're twisted into a pretzel in your bra on your boss's bed while a French chiropractor you've never met before and who doesn't speak a whole lot of English attempts to crack your back.

"Don't go to party tonight," he was telling me. "You can drink alcool? You know alcool?"

"Well, yeah."

"Don't drink too much tonight. If you are bourré it will be very bad. You know bourré?"

"Um..."

"Bourré is like--" He let his head hang to the side and stuck his tongue out to mime puking. "No, you would be more pompette."

"What's pompette?"

"Pompette is more, nice. Or cute. You are English?"

"Américaine."

"Bourré is like the English girls. I was in London and they all were wearing such short skirts, and all so bourré all the time. And in very high heels. It was very bad..."

The man has obviously never been to the intersection of Clark and Addison on a weekend, or he might think more kindly of English girls. By the way, I'm now thinking about changing the title of my blog to "La Jeune Fille Pompette." Thoughts?

Sleds in Paris

All right. I admit it. This is a lot of snow. 

And for a city not particularly used to snow, I can see why it has thrown everyone a bit. The streets are fairly quiet, traffic is light. And because some things are important, I still see French women stomping through six inches of snow and ice in heels. Yes, I know that technically they are "boots," but a four inch spike heel in this kind of weather is going to kill you. French people, or at least Parisians, do not really seem to take weather into account when dressing. For example, in the winter, one wears a winter coat and a scarf. Yes, it may be 60 degrees and sunny, but it's December after all. 

Because I did nothing yesterday, and because I'm from the American midwest and therefore hearty enough to withstand any blizzard, I went out to meet Ellie for a museum and some exploring. We met in the 16th, close to halfway between Boulogne, where she lives, and where I am in the 7th. Musee Marmottan Monet was once a 19th century hunting lodge, and is now the backdrop for all of my if-this-was-the-Victorian-period-and-I-was-a-European-heiress fantasies. Ellie and I agreed that the beautiful house was much more tastefully decorated than Versailles. No offense to Marie Antoinette and everything, but we can kind of see why they rebelled. Of course I'm a sucker for Impressionism and early 19th century miniature portraits. It may be one of my new favorite museums. 

After Monet we wandered into Bois du Boulogne. I'm sure it's beautiful in the spring, but it was positively Narnian blanketed in snow. (I guess I'm feeling a little fanciful today). 

A few stalwart souls were running. Big, fluffy dogs gleefully bounded in and out of snow banks. Little children were sledding down the sloping bank toward the frozen river. "That looks so much fun," I said a little wistfully. "I wish I could take Le Petit here, but there's no way V would allow that." 

I watched a Dad jog over to stop his kids from sliding onto the ice.

"On the other hand," I said, "What if a kid was going too fast and didn't stop in time and slid onto the ice and then fell through and got hypothermia?" As we started walking back toward the city for hot chocolate and pastries we saw a dad situating his child on a makeshift sled of what looked like an old laminated shopping bag. Hmm. Questionable.

Parenting judgments aside, the day could hardly have been more picturesque. Can I just say one more time how glad I am that I brought my rubber boots? Because let's face it, I am just not that Parisian.

Quoi Pour Tous?

I was going to write today about the lovely Christmas parade I went to in Spain, but I just stumbled upon 300,000 French homophobes hanging around outside my apartment building shouting "Un Papa! Une Maman!" and this needs to be addressed. 

Le sigh, where to begin? I feel like there's this idea in the states that all of Europe is this magical, liberated place, where sex is comprehensively discussed in schools, boobs aren't censored at magazine stands, and nobody is irrationally afraid of black people. Well folks, I have never in my life seen so many people assembled in solidarity to take a stand against human rights. 

So there I am, leaning against the pole on the Metro, with two more stops to go, when a voice over the speaker announces that the Ecole Militaire stop is closed. Not a big deal, Tour Maubourg isn't that much farther from my house. I get off and start walking. My, it's busy for a Sunday! I notice lots of families with small children, and the crowds appear to be getting thicker. A lot of them are carrying flags. "Manif Pour Tous." Something for all. Well, that sounds alright. Until I notice that the pictures on the flags are distinctly hetero families. A mom, a dad, and two little kids holding hands. As I approach my bakery, I seem to have reached the heart of the throng. "Un Papa! Une Maman!" A woman sports a sticker that reads "mariage/adoption homo NON!" Continuing home, I've suddenly fallen in with them. Now people on all sides of me are waving flags, singing, chanting, grinning, hearts uplifted by the magnitude of their numbers, the strength of their convictions, and overwhelming agreement from all sides. It reminded me of Spirit Week in high school. I was never much for school spirit, but even I was gleeful, buoyed along by a jubilant mob. 

And so there I was, suddenly part of a protest who's message I abhor and disdain, and no other route home. I was disheartened to see that the protest was not, in fact, just crotchety grannies with canes and white haired guys with pipes shouting incoherently about the end of civilization. No, there were young, trendy people there too. Families with their smiling kids, who'd painted pink and blue mamans and papas on their cheeks. My thought has always been that the world in general must outgrow this kind of discrimination. That the young and the fashionable will always correct the mistakes of previous generations and this too will go out of style. I assumed it was true that you can't stop progress. Maybe I was wrong.

God. I should have flashed them.

What's a Malaga?

Many months ago, when I first realized that I would be away from home for Christmas for the first time ever, I began trying to convince everyone I knew and loved who might be able to spring for a plane ticket to spend Christmas in Paris with me. How glamorous right? 

Obviously, nobody took me up on that.

Except my cousin Christopher that is. Christopher gave me a maybe, because he was actually going to be in Spain for a while in December, visiting some friends. It occurred to me to wonder who the hell he knew in Spain, and why it was cool with both these friends and his boss that he spend an entire month there. But then, my mysterious cousin Christopher from Hawaii is an enigma. I wouldn't be surprised if he told me his dear friend Oprah Winfrey was coming over for lunch and then they were both going on vacation in Iceland for a week. 

Anyway, Christopher did go to Spain, but rather than come to Paris he asked if I'd like to spend the weekend with him in Malaga instead. I had no idea where Malaga was but there had to be sun there right? I hadn't seen the sun in a month. Next thing you know my plane tickets are purchased and I'm frantically trying to google a way to get to Charles De Gaulle airport in time to catch a 6 am flight, when all forms of public transportation in Paris are closed. 

God. Paris. 

Dear Christopher came through with a solution again, and sent me a link to Super Shuttles. Super Shuttles is a service that picks you up at your apartment and drives you to the airport in time to catch your flight. Even if it means picking you up at 3 in the morning, unheard of in the so-called City of Light. So I booked the shuttle for between 2:40-2:55 AM, amazed at such convenience. It was positively American in conception. (Can you tell I'm feeling homesick this week?) 

The website asked for a phone number, which I gave, and urged passengers to be ready to go at the beginning of their fifteen minute window. Well, I assumed that since I gave them my phone number, they'd call when the shuttle was ready. Seems logical, no? But 2:55 AM came and went without so much as a peep from my phone. Oh Christ. What if they don't call and I was actually supposed to be standing outside at 2:40 but I wasn't so they just left me? I tried to call the number on the website but it didn't even ring. Was there something wrong with my phone? Did they try to call but I couldn't get  it because my phone wasn't working? Was this all just a scam? They just charge my credit card and never show up? I checked my phone. 3:10 and no missed calls or messages. Now what! No metro, no RER, and no AirFrance Bus. I could theoretically call a taxi but that costs an average of 100 euros, which I definitely did not have. What to do now? 

At 3:20 my phone rang. My shuttle would be there in four minutes. 

But as soon as the driver had put my suitcase in the trunk and shut the car door behind me, my newfound peace of mind vanished. I mean, come on, trusting a complete stranger in the middle of the night in a still very foreign city to drive you to the airport and not to an abandoned warehouse to be sold into sex slavery is a lot of trust. I tried to talk myself out of it, but why were we still not leaving Paris? Shouldn't we be leaving the city by now? And I thought there would be others, why was I all alone here? It certainly didn't help that we then we rolled down the street with the most strip clubs and sex shops I have ever seen on a single block. Strip clubs and excessive graffitti are the two unmistakeable signs that you have now reached the Bad Part of Town. God, this is it. The end of my life. I absurdly wondered what kind of underwear I was wearing, because it would be embarrassing if I was raped while wearing granny panties. 

But as it turns out, at the end of Porn Hut Alley we picked up a rather friendly Russian lady, and I was not taken to a makeshift brothel after all. It's amazing how ridiculous your fears seem the moment you realize there's nothing to be afraid of. 

So I made it to Spain. Christopher picked me up at the Madrid airport, and we drove five hours down to Malaga. The sun was bright. It was around 72 degrees. The sky was clear. I walked out onto the back porch to soak in the view. Christopher's friends Janet and Darryl live on a hill, and the back of their house looks down onto pretty little nearby villages, trees, an olive orchard, and the gorgeous blue Mediterranean. On clear days you can see the Rock of Gibraltar.

"Would you like some Cava?" Darryl asked me.

Ah. Vacation.

My Paris Vacation

No, I haven't left Paris to go on vacation, just that since Katie has been here I have done all the vacation-y things one does when on vacation in Paris. It's ridiculous that I've been here for over a month and still hadn't done half the things we accomplished in 5 days. We:

Took five hundred million pictures of the Eiffel Tower from about seven different angles, 

went up to Montmartre to eat fondue and tour Sacre Coeur, saw Notre Dame, went to the Place des Vosges, went to the Marais and waited an hour for the most delicious falafel in the world, took a boat tour, went to the Louvre, walked along the Seine, admired monuments, shopped,

...and drank lots and lots of wine.

And we've still got two days to go. We're planning the Musee D'Orsay, Catacombs, maybe Rodin museum, and Versailles of course. 

I've actually seen more of Paris being a tourist with Katie then by actually living here. I didn't feel the need to get all touristy because I figured I'd eventually discover all of these things anyway. Like, I'd just wander into Sacre Coeur on a random Sunday while doing my errands. I wanted to experience the life of a true Parisian! You know, I know my life is supposed to be perpetually magical and lovely because I am in Paris and everything, but the fact is that Parisian life is really not that much different from actual life. Turns out just running off to Paris on a whim isn't going to change everything. Damn.

Still, I have to admit, popping the champagne as the Eiffel Tower lit up at midnight on New Years Eve, that was pretty magical.