The Bold Soul: A Writer's Life in Paris

Au pied

In Paris, you will often hear someone describe something as being "deux pas" (two steps) away, which means it is allegedly very nearby, quite close, convenient. In real estate parlance, of course, we know this claim to be total bullshit. But when it comes to love, maybe it really IS closer than we think. Perhaps... only "deux pas" away. Read more →

Out of the mouths of babes...

Hysterical article about what CHILDREN say about marriage and dating. It was too good not to share with all of you. Some of my favorite quotables: "God decides it all way before, and you get to find out later who you’re stuck with." (Happily, I got "stuck" with the right one, so... thanks again, God!) From a 6-year-old: "No age is good to get married at. You got to be a fool to get married." (So jaded already, at only 6?) "Even boys have something to say if you listen long enough." (Tee-hee!) "It’s better for girls to be single but not for boys. Boys need someone to clean up after them." (Depressing but true.) And from this boy, wise beyond his years at 10: "Tell your wife that she looks pretty, even if she looks like a truck." He's going to make some truck-faced woman very happy some day. Read more →

Half a decade

Five years ago last week, Georges brought me to Saint Raphael for the first time. He introduced me to his sister. He brought me on a walk through town to show me around. We bought a melon in the outdoor marché in the old town. We went down to the beach to admire the view. And then he got down on one knee and asked me to marry him. Our special place: "Melon" Beach I am such a lucky, lucky girl. Read more →

Not that I need this, but...

Still single and living in the New York metropolitan area? Lonely and tired of it? Looking for new ways to meet that special someone? Why not head to the airport? You might not even need to buy a ticket. According to this article, Newark Airport (sorry, I'll never get used to calling it "Liberty International"; it's NEWARK for cryin' out loud) is the 3rd-best airport in which to find a date. #1 and #2? Orlando and Miami. Where they have sunshine, ambiance, beaches, Mickey Mouse and a lot of palm trees. But Newark, THIRD? The 4th and 5th picks were Philly and Beantown, what's up with that, too? Apparently this all has to do with a new dating site called MeetAtTheAirport.com. Haven't looked at it and don't intend to. But hey, I guess that's as unique a concept as any to try and meet someone new and potentially datable. I mean, as long as the person you're hooking up with doesn't have explosives hidden in their underwear. I can't help wondering if the only reason Newark made the top 5 was because of all the delays that are a normal fact of life when you're flying out of an airport... Read more →

Doublé date

On this theme of "doubles", last night Georges and I went on a really fun double date with a good friend and her new fella. While we were walking to meet our friends, I said to Georges, "This is fun... a double date!" Georges laughed and said he thought that was such a funny -- as in funny ODD, funny STRANGE -- term, "double date". In his mind, it conjured up a very different reaction for him than it did for me. For me, a double date is a totally normal thing, just meaning two couples hanging out together somewhere. And for Georges -- because the French don't even "date" in the way that we Yanks think of it -- it just sounded rather bizarre to him. Which made me think, and not for the first time, of the similarities as well as the differences in our two cultures with regard to how couples become couples. My friend (the one we were meeting for dinner) and I have often discussed this, because as women over 35 who have either married later in life ore are not yet married (although I suspect for my friend, her relationship status on Facebook is... Read more →

Just one more reason why I will never, ever do anything other than writing

Because you can also write in WINE BARS during evening apéro as well as in cafés during the day. Do you know m(any) other professions where you can actually drink on the job and it's no big deal? What's not to love... they even threw in some free saucisson. I'm on Chapter 11 now... in which I describe what it's like to start dating again at age 45 after a 10-year "man embargo"... and in a foreign country, no less. And you know what? It's not as easy as I thought it would be, to write about my sex life. I'm normally not that inhibited and generally I love talking about sex. But looking back on my dating history, including my pre-Paris days, I think there were times when I was a little bit of a slut. (My best friend just choked when she read this... she'd probably add "more than" before "a little bit of".) And my mother's going to read this book some day. Read more →

The winner, and still champion

So, on the eve of my 400,000th visitor (waving happily at you, whoever you are!), I took a long-overdue peek at my visitor stats to see what's what, and to get my usual chuckle at some of the keywords people are typing in that somehow lead them HERE. And as always, the biggest draw is variations on a theme: "Is he into me?" It continues to bring in a fair percentage of new visitors after directing them to this page (although I have now written several posts on the subject, since it keeps coming up). When I say "variations", I am not kidding. Check out the current list, where apparently slight differences in punctuation, spelling or phrasing "count" in search engine lingo: Is he into me Is he into me? Is he into me or not signs he's not into me signs he is not into me how do I know if he's into me how into me is he he's not into me [I'm sensing a pattern here, aren't you?] why is he not into me how do I know if he's not that into me how do I know if hes into me how do I know he... Read more →

If you even have to ask, then he's NOT into you

I keep thinking there will no longer be a need for me to keep harping on this subject, but apparently not. Some of you out there are still wondering. My now infamous blog post from April 2007, "He's Into Me... He's Into Me Not", continues to be quite popular with Google for anyone who has typed in something like "is he into me or not?" As I'm working on my book, I've been spending some time going over old blog posts by way of organizing my thoughts for the book, and today this one caught my eye again. In reading it, I realized it still holds true -- everything I thought and said about men, dating, and how we women need to stop making excuses for the ones who simply aren't into us enough. It now frustrates me when I hear a perfectly lovely woman wasting her energy, wondering why that "special someone" hasn't called, or when he'll call, or what he meant by that cryptic email he sent, or when he's going to ask her out again. Blah blah blah, in an endless loop, single women everywhere are having much the same conversation with themselves and their girlfriends, micro-analyzing... Read more →

Surpassing my understanding

It's been a while since I had any reason to post about my past as a single woman, let alone to THINK about it. Having just passed our 1-year anniversary of meeting and our 3-month wedding anniversary, suffice to say that I have plenty of good things to think about that are happening in my PRESENT, so I'm not putting any energy into dwelling on the past. Today, though, two things sort of coincided that made me reflect on some of my ex-boyfriends. One was that I've been re-reading every blog post since the beginning, sifting through them for material to include in my book. And I got to this one about one of my exes who had been lurking on the blog. After that post, he got the hint, his cryptic encoded comments ceased, and although for all I know he may still be reading the blog, at least he's not up to his old games in my comments box. In that same post, I also referred to another ex, one who continued to contact me over the years despite his being married, then married with children, then married with children and professing to have found Jesus (um, yeah,... Read more →

For the LAST TIME, he's NOT into you if...

About once a week (more if I'm really bored), I like to look through my blog stats to see who's linking here. What is the most interesting about the stats is that they show me the search words or phrases people are typing into Google (or whatever search engine they're using) that end up leading them here. And here's what I just figured out, much to my chagrin: the greatest number of visitors (a whopping 20-25%!) who find me by searching on words other than my own blog name are women who are trying to figure out if some guy is "into them" or not. They end up here, a post I wrote in April 2007 and which now seems to show up THIRD (out of 486 million) on the Google list for "Is he into me?" Go figure. I wrote that post on the heels of the realization that the Australian guy I'd been dating had gone missing without so much as a G'day. His last words to me were: "I'm looking forward to seeing you when you when you get back to Paris" before he was about to move back to Australia; we both wanted to get together... Read more →