The Bold Soul: A Writer's Life in Paris

Our best-dressed Lady

Isn't Notre Dame just beautiful in her finery? Read more →

French Stereotype

Last November before I came over to Paris, my best friend's oldest boy, Tyler, asked me if it was true that French people ate snails and were they called "es-car-gotts" (he had started studying French and hadn't gotten the pronunciation down yet). I told him, yes, it was true, and that I'd had them and they could be quite delicious (though I once heard them referred to as "pencil erasers drowning in garlic butter"). Then, as a gag gift for Tyler's Christmas present last December, I brought him some escargots, and you should have seen his face when I told him what was in his still-wrapped gift -- he was horrified! Until he discovered they were CHOCOLATE escargots. Read more →

And fou-er still...

Eavesdropping on an IM session one hour before scheduled lunch date: "Qu'est-ce que tu fait?" "Work? Bof... no heart for this." "Me either, which is why I am doing a task that requires no HEART whatsoever." "Could you come sooner?" "When?" "Now." There is perhaps only one thing more fou (crazy) than missing each other like crazy after only two days apart, and mutually deciding to meet even EARLIER than planned for lunch because we can't stand it another minute and every moment counts. And it is two lovers sitting in a Parisian café as the end of their lunch draws near and they know they must return to reality from their own bulle d'intimité (private bubble), looking at each other like they are about to be separated for YEARS... instead of just a few more days. Suddenly, I start laughing: "We are acting like one of us is going off to war or something, like we'll never see each other again... and we'll see each other on SUNDAY! What is the matter with us!" Then we're both laughing until we're red in the face at the sheer silliness -- and intensity -- of this thing between us. And then... Read more →

Warmer

It's cold in Paris today (I have had to turn the heat on a little in my apartment), so I thought I'd post a photo of a lovely, hot, sunny August day in Murano, Italy, to warm us all up. Of course, I'm all toasty inside at the thought of meeting Georges for lunch today. How is it possible to miss someone so much, after just 48 hours apart, when you only met that someone two weeks ago? C'est fou... but it's wonderful. Read more →

Seeking terra firma

I know I don't post a lot about my work -- the stuff that pays the bills, the writing-for-hire and web design projects -- or my clients, mainly because there is always a chance one of them will be reading the blog and I want to keep our work together confidential and professional, and that is as it should be. Nor would I ever be likely to bitch and moan about a client or project on this blog -- I do not bite the hand that feeds me. I am very fortunate, though, to have really wonderful clients. They are never unreasonable or overly demanding, they are generally very pleasant and creative people, I tend to develop long-term working relationships with most of them, and some have become true friends. This is one of the reasons I left corporate life and decided to fly solo nine years ago this month, despite the financial unpredictability that is a part of self-employment: I wanted to be able to CHOOSE with whom I would or would not work rather than having a bad client tossed in my lap and being unable to do a thing about it. That being said, my clients are... Read more →

Rue du Mont Cenis

Don't try to drive this Parisian street from end to end if you see it on a map... there are several breaks in the street for pedestrian steps, as this street goes down one side of the steep hill in the 18ème that is Montmartre, behind Sacre Coeur. Read more →

A Weekend in Pari(s)dise

I had forgotten, after not being in a relationship for so long, how being with someone you love can make even the simple things seem so much better. How, even when you are not with the person you love, just knowing he's "out there" somewhere, thinking about you, makes even the time spent apart special. I was at the supermarket the other day, replenishing supplies, and phoned him to find out what brand of bottled water he likes (since he, being French, prefers the fizzy kind, and I take my straight up and plat). We managed to turn THAT into a romantic moment, just by the tone of our voices. This weekend was a social whirlwind. It started on Friday evening with a surprise birthday party for one of my friends, which I went to on my own (Georges had something else to do). Incidentally, this was the first time the transit strike got in my way, from the over 90 minutes it took me to get across town to the 20th for the party, to the scary moment I had trying to get home at 12:30am when they arbitrarily decided to stop running trains on line 13 (after me... Read more →

Endings and Beginnings

Today I realized, as I was sifting through ideas for upcoming blog posts, that I've been posting about my new love, Georges, (a.k.a. My Parisian -- yes, he DOES have a real name... Take a bow, mon coeur; you've been "outed") under the category "40+ and Still Single". It now feels completely wrong to do that. While I am still over 40, I am no longer "still single". We are both hooked... "trapped" in the very best sense of the word. Off the market. Together, even while apart. Life has been forever altered, in the best way imaginable. Les jeux sont faits. So it is with amusement (not sadness) that I bid au revoir to my former single self, wave her cheerfully off into the sunset, and effectively retire this blog category. Oh, I may still post in it from time to time... reflections on the past, or posts about single life in general. But now is a time for new beginnings, turning the page, a new chapter. And a new category to match. L'Amour: Ça Existe après 40. Love: It does exist after 40. Read more →

Others

Wow, will you look at that. There are OTHER PEOPLE in Paris besides me and Mon Parisian. I had no idea. There are things happening out there in the City of LIghts, and none of them such good news. We interrupt this love-fest to bring you some ACTUAL news, live from Paris... So it looks like the Sarkozys are finally putting it all out there and dealing with what most in France already knew for a long time: this was not a match made in heaven,and divorce proceedings are beginning. In America, it would be thought to be a scandalous thing, nearly worthy of impeachment in some citizens' eyes and certainly worthy of 24-hour coverage on cable news, if our President wanted to divorce his (or HER... ahem) spouse for irreconcilable differences or infidelity. The French have a decidedly different attitude toward the personal lives of their Presidents, who historically have all had affairs and sometimes children outside of the marriage. As long as the guy can do the job he was elected to do, they figure, who are WE to tell him how to live his private life. We wouldn't want him sticking his big nose in OUR affairs,... Read more →

The Franglais Connection

My French has been improving rapidly already since meeting Mon Parisian. For one thing, this is the most consistent daily contact I have had with a French-speaking person since moving to Paris, and I'm so relaxed around him that I'm not so embarrassed to make faux pas around him. So that is part of it. The other part is, he's really great about helping me and even correcting me in a way that does NOT cause me to want to hit him over the head with my Larousse Advanced (that's the big HEAVY dictionary, the one that would really leave a mark). Our conversations, both verbal and online, have taken on a Franglais-ish quality, especially on my part because I have further to travel to the point of fluency, but I'm making more of an effort to speak in more complete sentences or at least phrases, to use the correct accent marks when writing (even though it means extra keystrokes for me with my American keyboard), and even to try and correct myself when I catch my own mistakes. And I find myself thinking more in French, and even talking to myself in French more often. Tonight, we were both... Read more →