Pursuit

Lately, a couple of well-meaning people have expressed concern to Nick that I may not be happy here.

First of all, respectfully: knock it off. I appreciate the spirit in which it is meant, but it has led Nick to suggest that there might be things that I'm not telling him, and that is a direction that this relationship will not be going in.

Secondly, and more to the point, it's made me think of a class that I took during undergrad that was all about happiness. One of our homework assignments--the best, to date, that I have ever done--was to spend half an hour or so trying to make ourselves happy, using nothing external.

The professor asked me to read my write-up aloud, and then asked a young man named Ethan to read his. We had both succeeded, but the similarities ended there: I created a specific visualization, and found that it reliably made me smile, reduced my tension, and raised my energy level. What I mean is this: I pictured something and got kinda bubbly (I had forgotten it for years until today, but it still works). Ethan, on the other hand, sat back and emptied his mind, and let satisfaction roll in. It was much quieter--sort of a sense of contentment.

We both said the same thing: "After hearing yours, I'm not sure I did it right" (and we both managed to get a little envy into the sentence). The professor suggested something different: it seemed to him like a state/trait issue. I had created a state of happiness, while Ethan had gotten in touch with it on the trait level--quieter, but deeper and more enduring.

My state happiness is on the fritz. It has been for a while, and moving to a foreign country was not likely to improve it much--certainly not at first, anyway. There are a million bright spots that make me laugh, and a million tiny pinprick frustrations that make me want to hide under the covers and never come out again. I don't sound any happier, is what I mean.

But I am.

My trait happiness--the steady baseline--has shot up, and most of that is undoubtedly being with Nick, but some of it is also being with Nick in Paris, because it's really cool.

Forget for a minute that the neurotic tics that were threatening to seriously invade my life (if anyone had taken my blood pressure in the subway during the last few months, they'd've been calling paramedics next thing, for example, and there are plenty of others) have all but vanished.

I spend half the day now restraining myself from asking people if I can take pictures of their children, or their dogs, or just of them, so that I can remember and write about what they said and what they wore and the silly thing they did or whatever. I have gariguettes on demand. I climbed the Eiffel Tower today--did you think I was kidding about the fitness plan?--and spotted my apartment from the second level.

Look:



There's me, because there's sort of an unwritten code among tourists in places like that that says you just offer to take pictures for people (and I did it, too). A couple of very nice Spanish girls took that for me when they saw me take out the camera to shoot this:



which I messed up because the sun was in my eyes. I meant to shoot a little further to the right, so the apartment's not in it, but since I had no intention of figuring out how to draw a big arrow or circle or whatever on the photo, you were just going to have to take my word for it, anyway.

Oh, and from earlier today, I've got a couple of shots of the market on our corner (Tuesdays and Fridays)--or of what was left of it, anyway, by the time I came back from shopping a few streets up. I liked the way it looked, half-struck.




Also, here's a French duck (Mary, I was strolling along the Seine for you):



And so, after my Eiffel Tower run, I hung out for a bit in the park underneath and people-watched. My camera wasn't working when the group of kids came by wearing bilingual signs that said "FREE HUGS" (people seemed charmed, and a bunch took them up on it--there really didn't seem to be a catch. It may be a French thing). But I couldn't help but smile when a 10-year-old American girl, strolling with classmates, looked over toward the tower and announced, "Oh! I love that tree!" As it turns out, I did, too, so here it is:

Branching Out

Les Escargots

I ate my first snails last night. And it was fine. I mean, they were Cordon Bleu snails, so, really, how wrong can you go?

For Christmas this year, I gave Nick a food-and-wine pairing class at the Cordon Bleu, and since the first few focused on regions that he's not that interested in, I picked the one that happened last night. I swear, it was total coincidence that I moved here in the meantime (as some of you may recall, that part happened very suddenly) and could come along.

So. The blur in front of the mirror is the translator, a long-suffering and very British man who obviously disliked the sommelier:



I thought it was especially interesting that he didn't usually translate the jokes; he tended to make up his own. So half of the class would laugh at something that the chef or sommelier said, which would be translated to dead silence, or the other half would laugh at the translation of something that had gotten no response in the original.

He really was a bit on edge, though--he obviously knew a thing or two about cooking, himself (he was a chef, not a professional translator), and couldn't always resist adding his own $.02. "I've put a pâte brisée [savory crust] on the bottom, and a pâte feuilletée [puff pastry] on the top," said the chef (this blur at the bottom:)


"He's put a pâte brisée on the top, and a pâte feuilletée on the bottom," the translator announced (truth be told, I don't know if he mistranslated, or if the chef switched them by mistake, but this was quite visibly not the case either way). "His reasons for doing this are...mysterious."

It got cleared up. And it was sensational. Oh, and here are our snails (cooked two ways, and paired with a rosé that changed character according to which type of snail you had just eaten:


They were delicious, although the cabbage-wrapped ones were a bit too buttery for my taste (surprisingly, the other kind, the sauce for which the chef announced he would finish off by "just drop[ping] in a hunk of butter," were not).

Le Marché

In other news, I also made my first foray into our local farmer's market this morning, and was pleasantly surprised. I am, at the root of it, very shy, and it's a busy, noisy place where you have to really push yourself forward. And you have to be better with the metric system than I am (half of my browser's bookmarks now are conversion charts and translation pages). Plus, at the first (and last) one that I went to, I made just one purchase and my French got laughed at during it, so I kind of had a skewed impression.

But everyone was very nice, and I got exactly what I wanted (including gariguettes: thin, tart miracles of strawberries that I just can't seem to stop eating now). Even the one hitch (the butcher blatantly trying to oversell me) was something that Nick had warned me was likely, so I was prepared to firmly insist that he remove the extra veal from the scale.

Les Movers

Also, I don't think that I've mentioned this before, but French movers are really cool. They don't bother trying to get massive pieces of furniture in through ancient doorways; instead, they all come equipped with one of these:



They are these cool ladders that extend automatically, with a platform on top for whatever. Unfortunately, not all of the difficulty is avoided, especially when a person owns furniture that looks like this:



See it swivelling dangerously as they try to drag it through the window? So did the pedestrians on the sidewalk. The whole ladder was shaking. We were really relieved not to be on the sidewalk. So then this guy (in blue, on the left) got out there to help it along:



Suckiest job ever, right???? We were placing bets. But he eventually turned it upright:



And then they both disappeared:



And now our new neighbor and her armoire can live happily ever after. As can we, with our veal and strawberries and snail recipes and tiny digital cameras that make our fiancés complain that people will think that we're tourists even though the people who were taking pictures of the Cordon Bleu meals were just doing it so that they could cook them for themselves, and what tourists take pictures of their neighbors, anyway? They would have to be nuts.

The End.

The Sage

Remember Penny, of "I thought it was a cat" fame? We spent the day together yesterday, and I already feel about a hundred times wiser.

Penny has lived in Paris for about five years now, and it's not the first new country to which she has uprooted (she reports, by the way, that Bostonians are much, much harsher to transplants than Parisians ever are). So she knows the city--and particularly our neighborhood, where she and Olivier lived for a while--and she also knows my frequent desire to just bang my head on the nearest hard surface and quit the day entirely.

Nick, darling, of course I am happy here. And I know that life here will be completely fabulous, and I wouldn't leave even if you offered me a plane ticket and movers and to come with me to New York tomorrow. But it's not all about that--or at least, it isn't yet.

"I think it takes about a year," she said.

Dear God.

She showed me dozens of little hidden spots near us--Mary, I told her that I was going to have to look impressively knowledgeable when you show up--including a tea shop that I could probably just stand in for an hour at a time. She taught me the different types of strawberries (the season just started here) and how to cook white asparagus (we're right in the middle), and gave me some language lessons.

For example, did you know that the French never say "I'm full"? It would be extremely gauche; you would shock people. They would think that you had behaved like a complete glutton, and now were bragging about it. Instead, they say "I am no longer hungry." And if you think about it, doesn't that just make so much sense? It's a huge cultural divide, summed up in an elegantly short phrase.

And she cleared up the small mystery from last week when, making dinner reservations, I asked for a table at "Half past twenty." I had been puzzling over the waiter's response ("Great! Twenty-thirty") ever since--it was obviously a correction (although a polite one; Penny and I discussed the difference), but I had no idea why. "It makes sense," she explained, "but no one would ever say it." Apparently, you can say "Half past eight," "Eight-thirty," "Half past eight in the evening," or "Twenty-thirty," but you cannot say "Half past twenty."

I mean, you can. But no one would.

Accidental

This morning, as I was jiggling my fork around in our toaster, two things occurred to me: 1) at least someone would find me fairly quickly, and 2) I cannot be the girl who moved all the way to Paris only to be killed by a toaster.

I mean, if I died, you would eventually think to ask how, right? And Nick is a lousy liar, and probably wouldn't even try, and so the whole stupid truth would be out there: we got this tiny little loaf of bread that doesn't pop up over the sides of the toaster, and I don't know where to get those neat wooden toast-tong thingies my parents have, and I was too lazy to unplug the stupid machine (the plug being all of six inches away and completely accessible), so....

Toast with jam has a wonderful way of making you realize that you've been overly morbid, but the fact remains that if I do have to have a tragic accident here, I at least want it to be a cool one--like, say, falling off of the Eiffel Tower.

This brings me to my new fitness plan.

The way I see it, I have about fifteen more pounds that I would like to see gone--twenty, probably, what with the whole wedding thing. Unfortunately, this calculation was made in New York, where I had a gym. And a scale.

The French don't really do gyms, so I'm here with a few yoga DVD's and the promise of the alleged "French paradox" on my side, and I have to tell you, that is not really especially comforting. And, later, when I sit down to my habitual (but moderately-sized and carefully paced!) lunch of goat cheese on toast, I will feel even less clever.

I get why I'm supposed to be able to eat meat and rich dairy and bread all day, and the fact is that my eating habits are probably much healthier now than they were last month. But I've also got all these saved photos of wedding dresses on my laptop, and I'm not sure that eating beurre blanc at any pace--no matter how leisurely, and chased with whatever amount of red wine--is really going to work. And I can't help but think that it's a system that requires faith in order to work at all, like a roadrunner cartoon where you can do whatever you want--as long as you don't look down. Technically, without a scale, I can't look down, but I can want to, and that may be enough.

Not to mention...I found Pringles®, of all things, in our little corner grocery. And, as I have been known to tell others in an annoyingly wise tone, our vices follow us wherever we go. I've stopped nearly all snacking cold...for two weeks. Can I really say that I'm cured?

So here's the new deal: I'm thinking that I should head over to the Eiffel Tower (about a ten-minute walk) and climb it. Last I checked it cost about 3 euro, which is comparable to the daily rate at a Manhattan gym, except that I won't be paying for days that I don't use, because the Eiffel Tower doesn't have a membership fee (suckers!). I'll be coming out ahead.

An hour or so of stairs--with a view--should put my mind at ease, and raise my odds of a non-toaster-related death. So I like this plan, and I am going ahead with it.

Except, not today. Today is rainy and cold. Today is just a toast day.

The Seventh Day

They take the whole "day of rest" thing really seriously around here. Even the people above us take a break from their loud sex and even louder vomiting to switch on a televised mass, but that's not the half of it.

I woke up to church bells this morning--that wonderfully presumptuous clamor that tells the world that it is time for services. And since then, there has been near silence from outside of our apartment (unless you count Blake knocking on the door with all of his suitcases, fresh from 24 hours at Charles de Gaulle--I hear that you people are having a bit of weather). Considering that we live near a playground and an ambiguous intersection that turns ordinary drivers into fuming, gridlocked madmen, this day truly is unlike all others.

None of this even begins to address the fact that everything outside of the Marais closes for the day. Okay--not everything. The French are smart: they make sure that a grocery store and a bakery near you is open Sundays, although they will typically be overpriced and underwhelming. It's kind of like with liquor stores in New York--except that it's everything.

I mean--imagine, say, Macy's closing for a full day each week. But not just them: every major departments store, 90% of the grocery stores, all the florists, candy shops, boutiques, restaurants. This isn't a thing where the local businesses have always traditionally shut down, but at least you can run out to Giant Chain Store for some milk and paper towels. Giant Chain Store is down, too.

I've decided that I like it. Nick and I run around like headless chickens on Saturday (this week it was mostly wedding-related errands--and hey, check out the real thing, although it's blurry:)


and then sit like cozy lumps on Sundays:


Speaking of which, how bourgeois are we, with this breakfast??



Anyway, the whole thing is just absurdly French-feeling. We wake up, we laze around, we clean a little, we watch TV, we make three full meals. Everything that could be done for the week has been done; no one has any expectations. There is no work, no stress, no guilty sense of what we could be doing right now, no time running out all too quickly before the whole thing starts all over again; it's a lost art on the East Coast, I think.

It's just...a day of rest. You should try it.

Terra Firma

I made a quick visit to the U.S. yesterday. Yes, that's right: I'm being annoyingly coy. I took Blake to the American Embassy.

Happy now?

Oh my God, Passport Services is exactly like the DMV in Herald Square. I mean, I think they used the same decorator. And it had the same little holding pen where people wait while staring at the completely nonconsecutive numbers flashing up at various windows with no hope of predicting whether theirs might eventually come.

This is where being a U.S. citizen was a nice thing. First of all, the layout out front made it really look like we were just cutting to the front of the line. I felt a tad like Paris Hilton while all the non-Americans glared as we were waved through.

I was, of course, carrying this giant stupid computer thing that I don't even know what it does, because apparently Nick didn't know either before buying it, and I had to return the damn thing later that afternoon. Try explaining that to the security guards at any embassy. I dare you.

Really, we were whisked from line to line; it was no big deal. The cool part, though, was the eavesdropping. I started keeping a running translation for Blake, because we had front- (or eighth-, whatever) row seats to all of the windows. And apparently, if you're a non-citizen trying to get an extended U.S. visa, you're in for some very invasive questions.

"Do you work?" asked the woman who spoke French with a horribly Midwestern accent. I mean, it was like she wasn't even trying. "No," said the 20-something on the tiptoes of her fashionable shoes. "Then how do you plan to pay for this trip?" "My parents are paying." "Okay. So what do your parents do?"

I mean...right? She also asked that girl about 15 variations on "Why did you choose California?" because the girl clearly had no clue what she meant. No, she had no friends or family there. She finally settled on "For the sunshine," but Counter Lady was obviously skeptical. Because she kept asking.

The one I really felt for, though, was an elderly woman born in Somalia, who wanted to visit her friend in New York. She was turned down--loudly--by the same Counter Lady, who explained that she just did not have enough ties in France, and was a risk to overstay her visa. Like the U.S. should be worried? France has universal health care, and a list of social services that would make you dizzy. You can't be kicked out of your apartment in the winter, even if you don't pay your rent all winter. They have the best bread in the world, and anyone who disagrees should just come try the place down the block, and then you may make your "point."

Who the hell would want to leave?

This is all, of course, just a lovely foreshadow of what I can expect when I apply for my French visa in June. I wonder what they will think of me? I was trying to pick up pointers, but the thing is that my ties in the U.S. are not all that impressive. Between now and then, I will be spending an awful lot of time working on my spin.

And working on my French, of course--the last couple of days have not been impressive. Trying to return the aforementioned stupid huge unhelpful computer thing? I went to three counters before being told that I would have to actually exit the building and go somewhere around the block to make the return. I swear, by then I thought that they were just screwing with me. And the man I could understand was busy, and while I was waiting for him a man I could not understand at all--I mean, at all--came up and offered to help. And keep in mind that at no point during any of this did I actually know how the French say, "I would like to return this, please."

I think that we have a store credit, or something. Nick will have to use it--it's time-limited, and there is no way that I will be ready to face that place again in the next 90 days.

But this morning the guy at Chaumette taught me how to say "crowded"--apparently we're seating three at a table for two tonight. And he was very polite when I realized that I hadn't been using a 24-hour clock when trying to make my reservation. "It's okay!" he assured me anxiously. "We say 8:00, too, sometimes."

So things are looking up.

...Continued

And another thing:

• Blake has arrived, sans passport. It disappeared somewhere between the U.S. and French passport control, so Nick spent about an hour busting the poor kid out of the airport. U.S. Airways apparently completely abandoned him (after making him leave the gate, where he was waiting for the employee who promised to go check the plane and never returned), and, by the way, they never posted an arrival gate (on the website or at the airport, even though the plane docked at one--no shuttles required. So please all join me in a moment of glaring disapprovingly at U.S. Airways.

• The passport office at the embassy is open Monday-Friday, 9am-12pm. Clearly, they have adapted to being French.

• We live fairly near a soccer stadium. Getting to sleep at a decent hour on Sunday nights is simply impossible. I feel old for even thinking that.

• The other night, when Olivier and Penny were here, we noticed something very small moving on the floor. Penny and I both jumped--I haven't been out of New York all that long, and it was approximately cockroach-sized. "I thought it was a cat," Penny said. "It seems like when something like that happens, it's always a cat." French neuroses are just so much cooler than New York ones. (The thing, by the way, was a Japanese rice cracker.)

• Métro stations come with little recessed faucets with running water. We saw a homeless guy rinsing his hands in one; I can't imagine what else one might use them for.

• They find different flavors appealing than we do. Like, it's easier to find mango yogurt in the grocery store than, say, strawberry. Chestnut yogurt is pretty popular, even. Sorry, Andrea: still no Mentos cassis. And Nick is getting increasingly snippy when I go off looking for it.

• Now that I'm here for good, Nick has suddenly become much more comfortable making me ask people for stuff. Like, he put his monthly Métro pass through the washing machine, and today he shoved me forward to plead with the guy. "He washed his card," was the best that I had. "He really did," the guy said when he saw the faded-out scrap of cardboard. It was too damaged to replace, if you're curious.

• We took Blake to Notre Dame, of which the coolest part is obviously the trained sparrows outside. There's just this massive flock of them in one of the rows of bushes, and if you bring over bread crumbs, they will swarm to sit on you and eat from your hand. I would never do this, of course--I just think it's cool.

• We talked Blake into ordering frogs' legs when we stopped for an apératif. In the meantime, the waiter brought over a plate of very thinly sliced saucisson for us to nibble with our wine. I swear I thought that Blake knew that I was kidding when I implied that those were his frogs. He did not. He ate most of the plate under the impression that it was frogs' legs.

• Oh, and Nick loved that the redeye went off when I took this shot on the stairs of a café:

Meanwhile...

"You realize that your blog has become a cooking how-to, right?" Andrea asked the other day. And she's right. And it's not that there's nothing else here, of course, but rather that I haven't figured out how to turn those other things into a coherent entry.

So here goes.

• Debit cards work differently here. For one thing, ATM's give you your card back before they give you your cash, which Nick is quite fond of telling anyone with a pulse (Aaron, I know I have you to thank for that). Far more frustrating for me, though, is the way that they work, well, everywhere. The card readers look just like their American equivalents, but quickly swiping and removing your card (my reflex, apparently) will invalidate the transaction. And it won't say why. They expect you to just know that you're supposed to leave the card in for the ages it takes until the machine says that you can take it back, and not doing so results in a line of angry people behind you, and a very cranky cashier.

• Hey, you know what really pisses off French cashiers? Digging around trying to find 24 cents in a currency you really don't recognize well enough to do this on the fly with while the line behind you builds up.

• Even better? Finally giving up and giving her 40 cents instead.

• You have to press a button or turn a latch to make your subway car's doors open. Usually, someone else gets there first, and the buttons are fine, but the other day I seriously considered missing my stop because I was worried that I would mess up the latch, resulting in my having to go another stop anyway with a bunch of people whom I had just embarrassed myself in front of. I did get off, and it went just fine.

• The Germans named syphilis "the French disease." That one was brought to you by Nick--of course.

• There is no substitute for a local (or two). Olivier and Penny, Nick's boss and his wife, came over for dinner last night. While Nick slaved in the kitchen (but I won't mention over what, Andrea), I peppered them with questions: What is reasonable to pay for dry cleaning a sweater? How do you say "animal shelter" in French? How about "Just looking"? Where should we get bicycles? What is with all the vicious little old ladies in this district? When Nick returned, he proceeded to run down the same list, often verbatim.

• We are overpaying dreadfully for our dry cleaning.

• We saw a huge Shepherd-like dog in the fountain at St. Michel yesterday, splashing around. And then realized that the homeless guy off to the side had trained the dog to retrieve bottles and cans for him, and that was what it was doing in said fountain. Now that's entrepreneurial.

• Paris has embarked on an anti-anti-social behavior campaign. There are ads up everywhere--on the roads they are stories of normal people killed by bad driving choices, and in the Métros they're aimed at people who are either careless or annoying. In other words, Paris has mounted an ad campaign against recklessness...and rudeness. Insert joke here.

• We have the first draft of a wedding guest list, and yet the stupid store still has not gotten my ring back. I'm wearing the silly fake one we picked up, and probably will be for the rest of my life.

• Nick's brother Blake is arriving as I write to visit Paris for a week. Ironically, although US Airways lists his flight as having landed 35 minutes ago, they still do not report an arrival gate. This is likely because Charles de Gaulle's roof fell in a while back, and so they no longer really have gates--and the remaining few are reserved mostly for smaller planes. Those of us who have just spent seven hours in coach not sleeping because the moron in front of us keeps thrashing around in his fully reclined seat while the moron behind us doesn't get the concept of a touch screen are loaded onto shuttle buses that can take half an hour to reach our "gate," aka: "the door they let us walk in through."

• Nick, of all people, has developed a taste for rosé champagne. We're talking here about a man who categorically dislikes champagne. And anything rosé. Somehow, it works.

• We have more or less agreed on a type of dog after I dragged Nick into the pet stores--seeing puppies is the surest way to fall in love. And he fell hard, for a scrappy little black English cocker spaniel who was being eaten alive by a bulldog and a black lab when we walked into the store, and had pinned the bulldog and completely won over the lab by the time that we left. Mom, if we get her, I'm pushing for "Molly Noir."

Day by Day

We have turned into a '50's couple.

Actually, since half of the conversations that we have now sound exactly like ones our parents would have, it's possible that we have simply turned into a couple in our 50's. The baffling part is that we don't seem to mind.

Seriously. I have decided to see the bright side: it's not that we have become less interesting by moving in together; it's just that now there is someone around who is interested in all of the dull minutiae. I explore Paris and run errands while Nick works, he comes home and reads the paper while I make dinner, we eat and chat about the aforementioned activities, and then we rinse and repeat. For days so lacking in narrative potential, they're really an awful lot of fun.

What's especially nice is that neither of us has to navigate being here alone anymore. Which is doable, I'm sure, but often incredibly frustrating. Yesterday I felt absurdly proud of myself after getting two watches repaired, and dropping off a few sweaters at the dry cleaner I have selected (O'Pressing, just because I like the name).

Can you imagine being proud of that? Nick can.

But really: at the dry cleaner the woman tallied up the bill, and then frowned, and asked me to check her math. Which I did. In French. Okay, mostly I just said "Yes, that's right," and then worked it out for sure as I walked home, but math in a foreign language takes forever.

And in spite of the fact that I spent most of both encounters silently praying that whatever the salesperson was rattling on about didn't actually require a response beyond smiling and nodding, the prayer was not so urgent, because if I screwed something up horribly, I would just send Nick back to fix it. And vice versa.

In the meantime, I made my very first beurre blanc (without cream, of course) last night, and it actually came out. If only I had had similar luck with the rest of the meal--fortunately, Nick has discovered a source of very good bread.

And I have begun to chat with one neighbor: an elderly man who takes about 20 minutes to walk ten yards, and always worries that I would be taking the elevator if he weren't in my way (well...I might). So far our conversations have mostly consisted of me completely misunderstanding his muttered French, and answering his questions repeatedly and at random until he indicates that I have finally made sense. He does not seem to mind; it gives him something to do on the long walk through the hall.

He thought I was Spanish. I think that's kind of cool. So does Nick.

See what I mean?

Fairing la Cuisine

Kill me now.

I spent the first few days trying to get past the fact that I have apparently chosen to live with a man who owns neither tin foil nor scissors, but the discovery that tin foil (along with plastic wrap and possibly Tupperware®) may not actually exist in France is something that will take much more getting used to. Apparently, they don't really do food-storage.

Or labor laws--this woman was on the fourth floor on a windy, rainy day:



You know what else the French don't do? Puff pastry.

You heard me.

See, I had dinner all planned out, because I'm kind of getting into this whole domestic thing (only worry if it lasts more than a week). I was going to make a version of the homemade pot pies I made in Washington Heights, which I imagined would be even more delicious with 1) forethought, and 2) fabulous French ingredients.

I searched every refrigerator and freezer case at least four times. No puff pastry (except for the kind with duck already in it), no ready-to-bake biscuits...nothing even close. And, apparently, somewhere along the way my entire self-worth had been staked on producing more than just a stew. I had the stupid Pyrex® baking dish (perfect size for two) in my grocery basket--I couldn't turn back now!

Finally, on the fifth pass, I came across the pie crusts. Even better: I came across four types of pie crust, including one labelled as "salée" (salted), and I refused to be deterred by such trivia as the picture of the apple tart on the front, or the fact that the French have not yet evolved to the crust-on-top phase of pie. Clearly, I have the vision that they lack, and I will be the one to use this salée crust for the purpose for which God intended it.

Damn, but it was a good stew. Chicken and vegetables, with red wine and veal stock ("fond de veau," my new favorite French phrase--it means "end of the calf" in much the same way that one might say "end of the hall"). Nice and thick, and seasoned perfectly. I poured it into the baking dish, and unrolled my crust on top. And nibbled a bit, of course, as I was cutting it down to size.

It was sweet.

It was really sweet.

It was my-mother-would-never-deign-to-bake-an-apple-tart-in-this sweet.

It was sweet in a way that was a million times more distressing than the way that it was dissolving rapidly into the stew. And I was too invested to just peel the thing off and throw it away--for added pressure, Nick had come home with no bread, possibly for the first time since he moved here.

Anyway.

Today I still have the bizarre taste of sugar and rosemary in the back of my throat, and I have decided that discretion is the better part of valor. I am strolling to the Eiffel Tower and taking a million pictures. I am dropping off Nick's watch at the horlogerie across the street, writing thank-you notes to the nice people who have sent cards (we feel that springing for international postage merits a written reply), and keeping my eyes peeled for tin foil.

And tortellini is fine for dinner, right?

L'Arriviste

It feels a whole lot like just another visit.

I think that part of it is that Nick loathes my ability to see nothing wrong with living out of a suitcase for a week (or five). So, a while back, he proudly showed me the drawers that he had cleared out for me, and then proceeded to fume when I chose not to use them for the three days that I was there. Three days!

Anyway.

When I arrived for my last visit, he took matters into his own hands. I collapsed into bed with my backward jet-lag (I can't help that it makes no sense; if I jolt awake at 4am it is not just to be stubborn), and he went straight for my suitcases. And while I sleepily shared travel anecdotes, he unpacked every last item I had brought. That is love.

Fortunately for me, he established this pattern just in time: on that trip I had brought tons of extra things to leave behind, and this time I have certainly brought more. Since organization is not my strong suit (giving up and living with the mess is, in case you were curious about my compensatory strengths), his initiative prevented endless bickering and sulking.

It has also made it hard for me to recognize that this trip is not like the others: not only do I technically have a return ticket (during which return I need to, you know, get a visa), but the sight of my clothing folded neatly in his (our?) dresser is nothing new.

One thing that is, though, is that, for the first time, I am writing this on my own laptop from Paris. And I suspect that that has something to do with all of Blogger appearing in French, at least until I finally found the manual opt-out page.

That is a thing I noticed yesterday, though: everything being in French doesn't bother me nearly as much as I worried that it would. I switched into French just before landing in Zurich, in fact (if you haven't seen the Alps, go see them now), which made navigating the airport and my connecting flight a little odd.

I sneezed as the second plane was taking off. "Gesundheit," muttered the girl next to me--due to our unfortunate language barrier, she already suspected me of making a play for her sketchy boyfriend. "Merci," I chirped.

Why?

And it's probably entirely to do with my safety net--every evening Nick will come home, and I will get to speak English, so during the day I get to scoff at others who do so out in public.

Mostly.

I stopped in to buy flowers last night (Nick and I negotiated for fresh flowers every two weeks unless he's not paying attention, in which case I can probably sneak in some more), and--okay, well, first of all, the set-up of the shop made it really hard to hear the guy. And I had just spent the whole afternoon wandering around and speaking French (I fell in love with this:

but Nick spotted the price tag and told me that I need to learn the French word for "pound").

Anyway. Florist Guy comes up to me and obviously asks if he can help me, except that it didn't sound anything like the "Can I help you?" that I have become accustomed to. I tried to say, "Pardon?" but my throat was dry, and it came out far too softly. Then I thought that maybe he had heard it anyway, so I didn't say anything else, and the two of us just stood there looking at each other for a few painfully awkward second-years.

"I'm sorry; I hadn't heard you," I croaked out eventually.

"Just looking?" he guessed, in English, and I was so frustrated that I didn't think to ask him how to say that in French, because it would be really useful. Damnit.

The whole rest of the purchase limped along like that, but we now have a lovely bouquet on the table, where we ate our first real dinner here together last night (I made risotto, risking life and eyebrow on our treacherous stove).

I think that it will take more little things: when mail starts arriving in my name (I currently suspect the gardienne of squirreling it away somewhere, although she was very nice when Nick introduced us), when we host Blake and then Mary, when I have my own bank card, when my bizarre jet-lag eases up and I can sleep through a night. Or maybe I won't feel entirely at home until the visa issue is put to rest.

I do know that I'm glad to be here, and that's a start.