A lorgnette from Paris

My most chic acquisition during my Paris visit was a lorgnette.

Wandering the stalls of the Marche aux Puces at Vanves, I was enthralled at all the offerings but tiring of needing to take my reading glasses out of my purse every time I wanted to inspect an item. (I still refuse to put them on a chain around my neck.  I just can't.)

And then lo and behold, just what I didn't know I was looking for:  this vintage lorgnette! 10 euros is my kind of price.

I hadn't really ever seen anyone use a lorgnette in real life.  Perhaps in the comedy archives of my youth:  Marx Brothers' movies, or Saturday morning cartoons?

Surely I could create a new fashion statement for Boomers like me who have had it with peering through the glasses perched on the mid-bridge of the nose.

Besides, the totally cool part:  this lorgnette is compact.  It folds. I spent the rest of the morning inspecting objets through my new specs.

I suppose putting this on a pretty chain or lanyard wouldn't kill me.

Related post:  Men Seldom Make Passes.  I guess I do have a thing for folding eyeglasses.

Save the Polly Waffle

Sometimes a news item comes across ye radar screene that has little to do with the general thrust of this blog.  And such was the case today.  I learned, to my utter dismay, that an Australian chocolate bar with the delicious name of  "Polly Waffle" is about to be given the axe by the Nestle chocolate company.

Really.  How dare they?  Just in time for the holidays, and Polly gets a pink slip.  So heartless. Honestly, corporate HQ, what were you thinking?

Polly Waffle has been around for 62 years, way longer than yours truly.  Surely it's not age discrimination?  In any case, the name is so... catchy!  There is even a Facebook group to save the Polly Waffle.


Meanwhile, back at the ranch, I'm compiling my next post about the top ten things I still haven't adjusted to one year after my departure from Paris.  Stay tuned.

One of these Things Is Not Like the Other

Go ahead and laugh. Laugh yourselves silly. Hahaha. What do I care?

We all did. How I remember tears streaming down our young cheeks, holding our sides because howling with glee for so long made our bellies hurt. Just hearing the tale of our grandmother inadvertently brushing her teeth with a dab of pale blue Head & Shoulders because it was in a toothpaste-shaped tube. Our unbridled hilarity about materfamilias misfortune. (Because she wasn’t the Fun Grandmother, she was the Other Grandmother.) Imagine, she washed her own mouth out with soap! We kids were thrilled.

So, like I said, go ahead and laugh at me.

Is it my fault if French cosmetics come in deceptively-shaped packages? Is it my fault that I don’t always wear my reading glasses in the bathroom because I’m trying to remove mascara?

Have you guessed which one is not like the other?

It’s the bottle of skin lotion in the middle. The other two are nail-polish remover.

Growing Old in Paris

Some thoughts bear repeating.

I mentioned to my family this Christmas that although I am delighted to be back in the U.S., I ultimately want to spend my dotage in Paris. Yup. It's a long way off (hey, in my mind I'm still quite the spring chicken), but now's the time to plan! When and if I have to grow old, for umpteen thousand reasons I'd prefer to do it in Paris. And preferably sooner rather than later. (The Paris part, not the aging part.) Hmm. More reflections on that reasoning for a later post. Meanwhile, it reminded me of something I wrote this time last year, which I offer here, slightly edited, for cheap regifting appeal. 'Tis the season.

Excusez-Moi, Madame

This has now happened to me three times in the past year. I'm striding down the sidewalk, high-heel boots clicking confidently as I bob and weave through the tangle of pedestrians. I'm concentrating on my next destination -- métro, bus stop, café, or wherever. Then, from nowhere a sweet, quavering voice calls out, "Excusez-moi, madame." I slow down and turn to see a diminutive dame d'un certain age, elegant wool coat buttoned against the cold, silk scarf neatly knotted, gripping the knob of her cane as she inches in baby steps toward the curb. "Est-ce que je pourrais vous demander de me rendre un service et de m'accompagner à traverser la rue?" she asks. ["Can you help me cross the street?"]

Each time this happens, I positively melt. MELT! I'm not quite sure why. First off, I'm honored that from a quick glance she has deemed me trustworthy enough to ferry her across a treacherous passage. The high curbs, you know; and the cobblestones are so uneven and the traffic so aggressive. I'm also pleased that she addresses me in French. And finally, of course, I do sincerely like to help; and this has never happened to me in the States.

I offer my elbow, and we begin five minutes of exchanging pleasantries. "Oui, oui," I nod, "it's not so easy crossing the streets these days. Oui, je comprends. Non non, madame, cela ne me dérange pas du tout -- it's my pleasure." We wait for the walk light to change as she clutches the crook of my arm; then we inch slowly across while she looks up at me, chatting in genteel appreciation. As we reach the safety of the next curb, she offers her most winning smile and heartfelt merci. Then our mutual au revoir et bonne journée, and we part company. I pick up the pace and continue on my route, this time with more of a spring in my step.

Every time this scenario happens, I get a lump in my throat.

Why?

Perhaps because I have an 85-year-old mother. Perhaps because I recognize my own future.

I deeply hope that some day, thirty-plus years from now, I'll be tottering down the streets of Paris, coat buttoned against the winter winds, hesitantly approaching a curb and eyeing the passersby to nab a younger woman whom I can stop and ask,

"Excusez moi, madame, est-ce que je pourrais vous demander de me rendre un service et de m'aider a traverser la rue?"

Pylones

Pylones is one of those stores.

When I first moved to Paris, I found it so witty and funny. Lots of wacky, impractical items, but also lots of other practical stuff that simply allows you to whistle while you work. Always something to make you smile.

After traipsing around Paris enough, though, it seemed as though Pylones boutiques were in virtually every arrondissement, and I grew a bit weary of the chain-store mentality.

But, oh, they do offer all sorts of irresistibly whimsical and entertaining merchandise, and I find myself drawn in, especially when out-of-town guests are around. I inevitable buy the alligator staple-remover (I needed a staple-remover for my desk anyway, so might as well have one that makes me smile, right?). Or the 3-D Eiffel Tower cut-out post card. Non-essential but definitely memorable. And just inexpensive enough to satisfy the budget impulse-shopping cravings. Funny corkscrews, playful salad servers, all in bright, colorful plastic. Silly rubber gloves.

But the latest draw for me is the reading glasses. (Please don't snicker if you don't need reading glasses yet -- you will some day!) Pylones has the most stylish reading glasses in Paris for the money.

Today, for the umpteenth time this month, I got a random compliment about my reading glasses, when I put them on to look at the bus map.

So here's the scoop. Reading glasses, 10€ a pair, all levels from 1.0 to 3.50 (maybe higher, but I'm in denial), including a matching case. All sorts of colorful patterns. The next cheapest reading glasses [loupes de lecture] I've found elsewhere in Paris are 20€ at parapharmacies. You do the math.


But you have to be willing to be a bit wacky. Make a bold style ...um ... statement?

Face it, you don't have much to lose once you admit visual defeat.

So the years spin by

Long ago

Two decades ago today, I went to the hospital in the morning, and in the afternoon I had a sweet new nine-pound baby boy in my arms.

Later in the day my first-born, Miss Bee, came to meet her little brother. Up to then, Bee was my Tiny One: she had always seemed so cuddly and small when I held her, my adorable little 22-month-old towhead.

Someone must have added growth pills to Bee's PB&J at lunch that day, because when she came toddling in the hospital room and climbed on my bed to snuggle and to bestow her first sisterly kiss upon Harry, she suddenly seemed to be the lumbering size of a teenager by comparison. Gargantuan.

How time flies warpedly, I thought at the time. How quickly they grow before your eyes and you don't notice the increments. "The days are long and the years are short," advised Harry's godmother. It was true. Before I knew it Harry himself was toddling in his yellow Hanna Andersson overalls (in the photo above) just as his sister had the day he was born.

Now here we are, two decades later. As of today, I am no longer the mother of a teenager. Today Harry is twenty. How can that be?

To Harry: believe it or not, I remember turning twenty myself and thinking "Aagh, this is the end of the world as I know it." And it is, in a way, kiddo, but you deal with it. And it's not all bad.

Far away

From my perspective, the only better place in the world than Paris is wherever your sweetheart is. And today my Sweet Heart, my baby boy-ee is on the other side of the Atlantic celebrating this milestone without me.

I have lots of photos of both kids in my apartment to keep me company.

I have his self-portrait, painted his senior year in high school, as an award-winning souvenir hanging on my apartment wall in Paris. (Such talent!)

We can Skype and e-mail and all that. But it ain't the same. Transatlantic momma aches to be with her youngest as he crosses the threshold to his third decade.


Happy Birthday, Harry!

Needing Therapy

I need help.

No, not that kind of therapy. I need apartment therapy. I just came across this photo of a kitchen.

photo by Lisa Neimeth

I found it in Apartment Therapy, which, for a neo-apartment-dweller like me, has been an online godsend. For almost two years I've been installed in my Parisian pied-a-terre, having downsized from a rambling 6-bedroom Greek Revival in New England. Until Paris, I hadn't lived in an apartment since post-college days. At 70 square meters (+/- 700 s.f.) my Parisian nest is either tiny and cozy or vast and empty, depending on who you're talking to. But I realize now that I have decorated in such a provisoire fashion. Now I'm realizing that two years just ain't temporary any more. It needs help, pronto.

After signing the lease and embarking on an initial minimal decorating frenzy to make it a livable and presentable, I've kind of let things slide. Comfortable, functional, with an element of Parisian chic was what I had in mind. But, um, I haven't even decorated the walls yet.

The kitchen came with some decrepit appliances, which the landlord didn't even mention as "included" in the lease. Yup, they were that bad: a waist-high fridge with lots of brown mold. A scary white stove whose door was grunged shut. My friend Chu took me to her secret bargain place, the Usines Center, in the suburbs of Paris. There I found my shiny new refrigerator -- oops, I didn't measure properly; I think it's the tallest fridge ever sold in France. Everyone comments on it! I also a acquired a too-short stainless steel (inox) stove, and decided I could live with the washing machine. Then an expat returning to the states sold me an almost new skinny Miele dishwasher. Hmm, my little cuisine was equipped and looking decent, I thought. I had fallen in love with its old tile floors and tall casement window that goes to the ceiling.

Along with the new appliances came a huge dose of reality, which of course has free delivery and installation. There is a severe lack of counter space. How was I to whip up those fabulous gourmet dinners for 16 that I'm so famous for? (ha!) Then I found an antique chestnut confiturier (jam cabinet) at the Marche aux Puces at Vanves, which provided a touch of "country" look, fit perfectly, and gave a smidge more counter-top space.

Then I did nothing else. Maybe it's the grey weather, maybe it's then end of the two-year honeymoon period, but right now I'm feeling that the apartment is lackluster. The colors -- ugh. I need a lift.

So I started thinking -- if you mentally overdosed my kitchen on megavitamins and steroids, it could start looking like that Apartment Therapy photo. Maybe there is hope!

So here's my quandary. Should I be a copy-cat and paint the kitchen a calm, pale green like that photo? It's so tiny, it would take about three hours to accomplish; I'd paint the walls (not the cabinets, which are plastic IKEA laminate). Then maybe I'd get around to refinishing the butcher-block countertop. And installing more shelves, and... and... and...

Love

It is 7 o'clock and my mother's house is still, as always, this morning. I step softly down the white wall-to-wall carpeting, past her beloved antiques and books that shaped my life. Ernest Hemingway: a Life Story. Of Diamonds and Diplomats. The Best and the Brightest. Friendly Adventurers. Our Hearts were Young and Gay. The Oxford Book of English Verse. Their Finest Hour.

Before I tiptoe out the door, I leave a scribbled note for my mother on the breakfast table, so she won't worry.

"Good morning Mom! I'm at Starbucks checking my email. I'll be back by 9:30"

I steer the car automatically down the lane, at the required snail's pace, past the white mail boxes and carefully trimmed juniper and saw palms on each lawn.

Out to the main highway, I accelerate to a whopping 35 mph to speed to the local Starbucks. I settle at the corner table with my mug of latte, log on to the Wifi and tackle the electronic onslaught. 99 unread emails in one account. 52 emails in the other account. This must be a joke! 90 percent of them relate to life in Paris. Racing to process is all. To retain some of it.

Two and a half hours. Starbucks is buzzing, the regulars gathering in the velvet armchairs, catching up with each other's news of the past 24 hours. In between attempts at focused responses to emails and calendar updates, I manage a sliver of new thought. I wonder if Hemingway's life in Paris was like this at La Closerie des Lilas? I wonder how writers ever write or wrote at cafés. The Starbucks crowd here is a back-slapping fun-loving bunch. Buddy Holly is blaring from the sound system. The barista stops by with free samples of coffeecake. So much distraction.

Nevertheless, at Starbucks I have the ability to check out Google.fr Actualités, and to find out what has been happening in France. I realize how tethered one is to the internet for access to foreign news. Starbucks is my haven for connection to the world outside this suburban island. News from France, emails from business and friends in Paris. How ironic that I never grace the doors of Starbucks in Paris. Here in my mother's town, Starbucks is Life.

Time's up. Mom will get anxious if I'm not back at the appointed hour. I whisk back down the highway, wave to the guard at the gate with her shining face, slow to a crawl as I drive past the turtles sunning on the mulched banks of the pond.

I sidle into my mother's house, hoping she's not up yet. She arrives in the kitchen in her plaid LLBean nightgown. "Where were you?" she questions hazily.

"At Starbucks." I reply cheerfully, as I have every morning. "Checking my email. Did you see my note?"

She wanders off to get dressed before breakfast.

Then, "What would you like for breakfast?" she asks, as always, carefully setting the table.

"Oh, I'm fine, thanks. I had breakfast at Starbucks," I reply.

"Mmmh." She looks perplexed, almost peeved, quizzical.

"Polly," she insists in her husky dulcet voice as she gazes at me. "What ARE star-bucks?"

How Fuite it Is

As I was watching Claire Chazal, a popular news presenter on TF1, I thought, Damn, she looks pretty good, and she's about my age. I remembered having read in Paris Match or Gala last summer an interview with her in which she divulged her beauty regime for keeping her youthful good looks. I recalled something like a cold shower and 200 abdominal crunches every day.

Inspired, I started Googling like crazy to see if I could find the Magic of Claire. She's French, fiftyish, gorgeous, articulate, successful: what's not to imitate?

Well, I never found the Secrets, but I found another secret. La Sante au Feminin. Mostly a women's health web site, it has one rather insistent icon to click on: la fuite urinaire.

God, I just love the French language. It's so poetic. Une fuite urinaire. Sounds like a lilting piano melody, when it actually means -- yes -- incontinence. French is just sublime! Instead of a weak bladder, you have une faiblesse urinaire. Sounds like a Perrault fairy tale. Instead of Depends, there is a lovely line of products called Tena. That sounds like a garden party, not a diaper.

Think about it. Wouldn't you rather say "Oops, I've got a little fuite urinaire. Anyone have a spare Tena?"

But here's the amazing thing I found. One method of treatment for incontinence and other gynecological muscle problems: a little device called KEAT© (pronounced kay-ot). There is a video tutorial you can watch. And all you wise guys can stop cracking jokes right this minute that this looks like a vibrating thingy. It's way too small for that. It is for rééducation périnéale à domicile.

You gotta just adore French. A most mellifluous and charming language. There's no question that it's so much more elegant to say "I'm doing some rééducation périnéale à domicile" than "I gotta go home and do my kegel exercises."

But I still couldn't find Claire Chazal's French beauty secrets. Maybe this is one of them.

Chalk it up to Experience

I don't know about you, but I'm just a teensy bit afraid of plumbing.

In the States, whenever the floater thing in the john went haywire, I knew how to do little band-aid fixes. Jiggle the handle, attach loose parts with wire: it never lasted long, though, and eventually I had to call in the authorities. Men always used guy-terms around plumbing, mostly to scare the women away, I think. Gasket, trap, flapper valve, trip lever, pipe plug. And phrases like "Your female threading is worn down," or "I think you need a new ballcock." Excuse me?

In Paris, plumbing takes on a whole new meaning. Forget the terminology for now. There's a beast lurking in the plumbing, and it's called calcaire. The water in France is very lime-y. Early on here I heard dire warnings of the need to put anti-calcaire tablets in the dishwasher, the washing machine, yadda yadda. I complied. Ever obedient, I pour special rock salt into a compartment of my dishwasher every few months, and I don't know why. I am among the truly intimidated.

French television commercials feature concerned (but secretly thrilled) plumbers removing chalk-caked, unrecognizable elements of various cleaning machines, the anxious female homeowner looking aghast. Invariably she has her head in her hands, wishing she'd remembered to use XYZ anti-calcaire product. "Don't let this happen to you!" is the message. Honestly -- it's scary.

When I moved into my apartment, a shifty plumber came to fix my water heater (which also heats the radiators). Once again, dire warnings -- this time about cleaning my pipes and faucets on a regular basis.

"Oh it's simple enough, madame, he said. Once a month you soak them in white vinegar, and it will clear out the calcaire."

So wait a minute. You mean to say that someone like me who is challenged enough just remembering to pay her bills on a monthly basis is supposed to remember to go around the the various mesh-screened spouts in the apartment and soak them in vinegar for half an hour -- every month?? I think not. And even if I did figure out how to remove the mesh screens, what about all that evil calcaire clogging my pipes? I can't exactly flush them with a white-vinegar enema. I thus imagine my pipes slowly getting hardening of the arteries with scale build-up, and eventually the water flow will slow to a trickle, then a drip, then... oh no!

So I've been pretty much ignoring that creepy guy's edict and somehow doing just fine. I simply can't believe that each citizen of the entire population of Paris spends six waking hours per year soaking their plumbing parts in vinegar. There is too much else to do in this burg.

But this week I started noticing that my shower nozzle was weakly spewing little arcs of water off to the side, and precious little water was dousing me where it needed to go. It was clogged with calcaire! Finally, last night I braved the plumbing frontier, and actually unscrewed the shower head. I soaked it in an anti-calcaire solution, brushed off all the little white pieces of chalk, and screwed it back in.

And I lived to tell the tale.

Aunt Polly

It's such fun to appear to travel in the fast lane -- writing about living the woo-hoo single-again femme-fatale life in Paris. So glamorous, so wow-wish-I-could-do-that. I do try to keep up appearances.

Then. I've been "outed," in a way, as being an "Aunt Polly." AUNT Polly! Sounds like I should be flipping griddlecakes in my gingham apron. Serving up steaming wedges of flaky-fresh blueberry pie à la mode. Yikes. So un-Parisienne! But nepotism being what it is, I proudly salute Molly-Vous Français and her charming consort Monsieur Beiderbecke Affair, and have added them to my links. Molly-Vous isn't a mere niece; she was my first shot at substitute parenting before I married and became a mother myself.

I craved motherhood in my twenties, and so offered to babysit and take her for wacky jaunts into town. Of course, I would have done so under any circumstances, such a charming toddler was she. At age three Molly-Vous scooted around Boston with me, proudly mugging for photo-booth photos with her new deely-boppers, much to her delight and to her grandmother's dismay. She bravely took field trips at an early age in my extremely rusted and unsafe, but much beloved and way-cool antique 1961 Mercedes (the first car I ever owned) when she was a wee lass in the 1980s. She didn't snitch and tell her mom that the seat belts didn't function.

Molly is now about the same age I was when I took her on those first field trips. But that's as far as the auntly influence goes. She is far a better writer than I. Check out her blog, All School Chorus, and I'm sure you'll agree. It offers much literary promise, as does the well-established Beiderbecke Affair.

I, the Unemployed Ancient One, have more free time to ramble on, unedited, in my posts. They, the Writing-Degree-Bearing/Worker-Bee Bloggers, put me to shame.

But fambly is fambly.

"Excusez-moi, madame..."

This has now happened to me three times in the past year. I'm striding down the sidewalk, high-heel boots clicking confidently as I bob and weave through the pedestrians, thinking about my next destination -- métro, bus stop, café, or wherever. Then, from nowhere, a sweet quavering voice calls out, "Excusez-moi, madame." I turn to see a diminutive dame d'un certain age, wool coat buttoned against the cold, silk scarf neatly knotted, gripping the knob of her cane as she inches in baby steps toward the curb. "Est-ce que je pourrais vous demander de me rendre un service et de m'accompagner à traverser la rue?" she asks.

Oh my. It's a proverbial little old lady who wants help crossing the street, but Paris-style.

I positively melt. MELT! I'm not quite sure why. First off, I'm honored that from a quick glance she has deemed me trustworthy enough to ferry her across a treacherous passage. The curbs, you know, and the cobblestones are so uneven and the traffic so aggressive. I'm also pleased that she addresses me in French. And finally, of course, I do sincerely like to help, and this has never happened to me in the States.

I offer my elbow, and we begin five minutes of exchanging pleasantries. "Oui, oui," I nod, "it's not so easy crossing the streets these days. Oui, je comprends, non non, madame, cela ne me dérange pas du tout -- it's my pleasure." We wait for the walk light to change, as she clutches the crook of my arm, and we cross slowly while she looks up at me, chatting in genteel appreciation. As we reach the safety of the next curb, she offers her most winning smile and heartfelt “merci”. Then our mutual "au revoir et bonne journée,” and we part company. I pick up the pace and continue on my route, this time with a bit more of a spring in my step.

Each time this scenario happens, I get a lump in my throat. Why? Perhaps because I have an 84-year-old mother. Perhaps because I recognize my own future, and I hope that some day thirty-plus years from now I'll be tottering down the streets of Paris, coat buttoned against the winter winds, approaching a curb and eyeing the passersby to find a younger woman whom I can approach and ask, "Excusez moi, madame, est-ce que je pourrais vous demander de me rendre un service?"

Men Seldom Make Passes...

Not so long ago, when I thought I was young and invincible, I used to smirk (inwardly), so unkindly, about people of a certain age who held the restaurant menu at arm's length and still couldn't read what to order. Or my older colleagues who were constantly misplacing their reading glasses despite owning multiple pairs. "Ha! That'll never happen to me," I thought smugly. "I have good eyesight and I eat lots of carrots."

God is punishing me now, big time. "Neener, neener, neener," says God.

Is there a French equivalent of "neener, neener neener?" I wonder. Because living in Paris puts a special twist on the need for reading glasses. There is the weird irony of going to a restaurant avec an English-speaking dinner guest but sans specs. So as my pal painstakingly pronounces, one by one, each menu item to me in phonetic but unrecognizable French, the waiter returns for the third time, asking "Vous avez choisi?" It's pathetic.

Although I'm no longer officially in denial about my need to correct my presbyopia, I still have a Freudian mental lapse about remembering to take them with me at important times.

Last summer I settled into my seat on a 3-hour TGV ride to La Rochelle, with good thick book ... and NO reading glasses. I felt like a wino without a corkscrew, a smoker without matches.

Oh, yes. The trick of always keeping a spare pair or five works great-- until you use the spares and leave them in wrong spot. And I'm too vain to get a chain to wear around my neck. For now. I still want to be oh-so-hip and carefree, not part of the chain gang. I know plenty of women who have gone for the contact-lens reading glasses route, but I'm not ready for that level of daily maintenance. For now. Do French women my age wear reading glasses? I don't recall seeing them do so, in public at least.

In Paris, the best place to pick up a pair of standard non-prescription reading glasses (les loupes de lecture) is in a pharmacie. The pharmacien(ne) will help you with fittings and so forth, and especially love it if you ask their opinions about which looks best on your face.

In the hair salons in Paris, if you are having messy stuff put on your scalp and tresses (of course of course not moi -- my hair is so very naturally auburn/chestnut-with-highlights), the coiffeur will give you des protege-lunettes. These are skinny plastic baggies that slide over the sides so you can keep reading Gala magazine gossip while the color cooks, without getting the staining goop all over your glasses. Maybe those filmy sheaths exist now in the US salons, but I don't think they're as ubiquitous as in France.

Resigned I am. But my all time favorite reading glasses -- the ones I have held onto the longest, too -- came from Bob Slate's, a stationery shop in Harvard Square, two years ago. If you have to be an old fogey and wear reading glasses, these are hands-down the coolest specs to own. Everyone I show them to loves them.

They are -- ta da! -- the Magnificent Nanninis.

Italian award-winning Nanninis have amazing pivotal hinges that move 360 degrees, so the sides simply don't break off.

They are designed to fold as flat as a passport.

In a pinch you can configure them so you simply hold them up like lorgnettes, which reminds me of the fussy socialites in the Marx Brothers' A Night at the Opera every time.

And best of all, Nanninis are not for the terminally middle-aged. (Nannini is NOT Italian for neener, neener. I don't think.) No, there are cool sunglasses and motorcycle goggles, too. The website, http://www.nannini.com/, tells you where to order worldwide.

And if I can't get my Nanninis soon enough, maybe I can get me some of these.

The Green Challenge

I never thought I'd start a post with the phrase "I've just been tagged..." because I don't usually know what to say. (My apologies to others who've tagged me in the past and I let it fall through the cracks.)

But today I got tagged by Kimberley of ParisianEvents, who is passing along the Green Challenge to bloggers: How do you introduce environmental sustainability in your daily life?

My mind races. This topic requires a fair amount of intellectual honesty. Have I been recycling every plastic yogurt container or just the ones I've rinsed out? Well, I can fudge on that one. I immediately start feeling guilty about my Nespresso maker, which is environmentally unfriendly. I did write to the Nespresso Company last month asking why they don't have a capsule recycling program here like they do in Switzerland. That may have been a noble effort, but doesn't really qualify as action helping the environment.

I start to worry if I am actually doing anything to introduce environmental sustainability in my daily life. What am I going to write about for the Green Challenge? Nature hates a void, and my brain starts filling up with everything that I'm not doing. This isn't helpful.

Old-fashioned Protestant guilt snowballs as it serves up my list of naughty environmental behavior: I keep the heat higher than I should in the apartment -- I just don't function well in the cold. Bad, bad. I forget to take my baskets when I go to the Shopi and end up bringing home 6 or 7 plastic bags, which Paris doesn't recycle. I buy water in plastic bottles. I buy prepackaged goods. I leave the lights on in rooms that I'm not using.

Help help help! I'm not doing so well in the day-to-day green score, I am thinking. Guilt is wracking my soul. I may have to write a lovely fib or something.

Then I pause and take a mental step back, for a little perspective. Wait a minute. How am I green in my everyday life? Here's the answer:

I moved to Paris.

Eighteen months ago I lived in a lumbering old six-bedroom house in Massachusetts, far more space than I needed for me and my two teenagers, who were away at school most of the time. I had to heat, clean, and maintain all that space. I had a wonderful green yard and a garden -- certainly good for the environment, but requiring lots of mowing and dreaded leaf-blowing when I couldn't muster the energy to rake it all myself. And an occasional bit of Round-Up for persistent weeds. I had a nice station wagon that I drove everywhere, a necessity of suburban life. I ran loads and loads of laundry each day. In the US, I got a triple-grande no-foam non-fat latte from Starbucks, every single morning.

Then I moved to Paris: I sold my car. I live in 70 square meters. I travel on foot, public transport, or bike. I read the New York Times online. I air-dry my laundry. I give old clothes to Emmaus or La Croix Rouge. I return the metal hangers to the dry cleaners. I recycle in the two bacs in the courtyard, according to the Mairie de Paris guidelines. I have yet to grace the doors of any Starbucks in Paris. I may not be Madame Verte, yet, but maybe I'm not such an environmental sinner after all.

Can I keep my Nespresso maker, please?

It's On the Bag

Something's been missing in my life since I moved to Paris. I couldn't quite put my finger on it for the longest time. It was a vague sense of a nagging little fundamental lack in my life. Something that had kept me grounded, a minor security blanket in my daily existence.

Then it dawned on me:

Twist-ties.

I don't know the reasons why, but twist-ties are as rare as hen's teeth in France. I don't really want twist-ties, mind you; it's just more adjustment in the learning curve, one more old habit to shed, a new method to acquire. The old daily familiar gesture of spinning the bag of Pepperidge Farm wheat bread or hamburger buns or whatever, a flick of the thumb and forefinger for two clockwise twists of the twist tie. It doesn't happen here. Ever. A daily reflexive movement, vanished. It's as if I stopped brushing my teeth.

There are plastic bags, of course. If you buy sliced bread or pita bread or english muffins at the supermarché, the closure is a finicky plastic strip that you have to tear off with your teeth. Score: one point for the dentist, zero for keeping the opened bag's contents fresh for any length of time. Or a short metal clasp that fits around the closing of the bag when only applied at the factory, impossible to re-close once it's been opened by a human.

Plastic garbage bags in France have a more ingenious system, sans twist-ties. It took me a while to figure it out. On the bottom of each garbage bag, I noticed, is a thin plastic ribbon. In my first few months here I though the ribbon had to stay attached to the bottom of bag and yet seal it shut. I won't bore you with a description of my early Paris garbage-dumping days, but it was not a pretty sight. Mangled, deformed trash bags.

Eventually Sherlock here figured out that when it's time to take out the trash, you simply yank the ribbon off and tie it in a pretty bow after you've spun the bag by the neck a few times.

The only items that I have found with twist ties are cords in packaging of new electronic devices. I straighten out these black twist ties lovingly and put them in my tool chest. Who knows when I'll see another one?

Joni was right -- Don't it always seem to go that you don't know what you've got til it's gone?

A small request

Dear God,

I know that I make a lot of requests. I usually ask You for the big favors in private. But there are some elements in Your hierarchy of What is Right that I need your special help with today. I know that You care deeply about grammar and spelling in all the languages of Your world, and so I beg You to help me with mine, and to forgive my grammar, spelling and punctuation mistakes when I make those terrible, awful, humiliating transgressions.

I know that You care about these matters, because someone must have told me so when I was little. Bad grammar = bad girl. Misspelling = deep personal flaw. I have secretly wondered what You thought of spell check and grammar check, but never mentioned it, because I knew You were watching me when I cheated and clicked on the abc icon on the toolbar of the computer screen.

And God only knows (oh, excuse me -- that's just an expression) that my French teachers instilled the same fear in me as well. Bad French grammar = F. Bad spelling = shame, shame, and more dictées, a form of purgatory in its own right. Good French grammar = A = Good Girl. Good French spelling = Très Bien = no more sleepless nights worrying about the next dictée, and the teacher smiled and told the other students to study hard, comme Polly. I was so embarrassed, God -- it was junior high -- but I gained the status of a Good Girl. And as You know, I didn't even attend a Catholic school.

But let's be fair, God. I was absent for a while when Madame Lambert was drilling the class on the mnemonic devices for remembering masculin and féminin of some basic words. You and I know which of these cruel French le/la vocab demons I have struggled with for the past 40 years: plage, garage, sable, age, crime, dictionnaire, and anniversaire, to name but a few. They are capricious little devils -- the harder I try to remember their gender, the more slippery they become, and I inevitably remember the wrong one. Is it le plage and la sable, or la plage and le sable? See what I mean, God?

And let's face it, God. The human brain can only retain so much. In my new life in Paris (I did remember to thank You for this, didn't I?) while I'm cleverly absorbing essential new French phrases -- such as péter les plombs and justificatif de domicile -- some of the other, older core knowledge from 8th grade just slips silently out the back of my rusting memory file-drawer.

Do You want me to be a Good Girl, God? I think You do. So, please could You just increase my personal memory capacity? Just a teensy bit? Oh, but maybe even You can't perform a miracle that miraculous at my advanced stage. So perhaps You might at least let me forget trivial stuff -- like that Rice Krispies jingle from the 60s or my first boyfriend's birthday -- so that there is more useful room in my brain for the proper use of French vocabulary that is so important in my current life.

Thank You. Merci.

Bon Anniversaire

Well, it's a red-letter day. No, not because this blog has reached the 30,000-hits mark since I've been keeping stats in late April. That pales in comparison.

Today I am the proud mother of a 21-year old. Yikes!

Trying to celebrate a momentous birthday like this when you're on opposite sites of the pond is no easy feat.

So, in honor of Mademoiselle Bee, here is one of her masterpieces, artfully sketched 11 years ago when on a mother-daughter excursion to Paris.

Bon Anniversaire, ma cocotte!!

It's Not Easy Being Green

Two nights ago, while I was in the midst of writing -- I'm sure it was a terribly witty and engaging piece -- an alien space ship hovered over my apartment and zapped my brain, simple as that.

In a flash I could feel all thought draining from my head, all energy sapped from my body. I crawled across the floor and slithered onto my bed.

Delirious Drama Queen lay on top of the covers, limply moaning for hours, realizing that it's August in Paris. Not only are my neighbors and the gardienne gone, but also any good Samaritan pals who could normally help revive me were, in fact, sunning on some distant shore. Anyway, I couldn't have reached the phone if I tried.

And by the time the cleaning guy would arrive next week, he would stumble upon my unrecognizable, dessicated corpse and sweep it into la poubelle.

Shivering, feverish, I spent the night planning my wretched funeral. Should the notices be posted on the blog? Who would inform my kids? Pine or fancy box?

Miraculously, I awoke in the morning. Several times. I was going to survive. But the aliens did run over me with a steam roller while I slept, just for good measure. My toes don't ache, though.

So maybe it wasn't aliens, but that other sinister invader, the summer stomach bug. Or "something I ate." Both Americanisms that aren't bandied about much in France when discussing digestion ailments.

On a need-to-know basis, not much you need to know. Suffice it to say that my grocery bill has plummeted, and my friends who have just paid to trot off for a week at a fancy "fasting spa" should have just stopped by chez moi and let me breathe on them instead. Not highly recommended, but a cheaper way to lose a dress size.

I'm delaying the decision to hobble over to the pharmacie at the corner, where I know they'll try to convince me oh-so-kindly that it's a crise de foie. But I know of other people who have this thing, and last I heard, a crise de foie wasn't contagious, nor does it last for three days.

Besides, I'm not venturing too far from home. I'm just glad I wasn't supposed to be flying to some glamorous vacation spot. Like Wolfeboro.

Cell Phones on Planes

Is any one else besides me clapping with one hand about the news that regulators have cleared European airlines for take-off to allow in-flight phoning? My other hand, of course, is clutched firmly on my cell phone.

This is not my idea of progress. Now airline passengers will be subjected to endless jabberings of their seat-mates: paramours and corporate wannabes, and anyone else who thinks they absolutely MUST connect to terra firma or else be doomed to withering on the vine. Or crying young lasses, weeping into phones over the break-up at the airport.

In fact, what will happen to all those lovely, romantic Hollywood-style good-bye airport scenes? If the conversation can continue while the plane is bumping through the atmosphere at 10,000 feet over the Dolomites, then instead of the tender kiss, the teary departure at the security checkpoint, it will simply be "Call me from the plane."

Will there soon need to be "Vols Silence" like the "Voitures Silence" on the SNCF, which brook no cell phone usage, no shrieking little darlings? Can we beg them to limit the in-flight service to just quiet text-messaging?

To be sure, there are times when I wish I could make a call in flight (Did I leave the tea kettle blistering on the stove? Did you remember to transfer the embezzled funds to that Swiss bank account?), but in general I find it unnecessary. Even more unnerving is the notion of plane-to-plane phoning, which is next: "My flight's almost empty -- I got three bulkhead seats. Cute attendant. How's yours?"

While the owners of the OnAir, the satellite service, claim that in-flight phoning rates will be expensive enough ($2.50 per minute) so that no one will likely spend a long time on the phone, I'm not holding my breath on that assumption. And I doubt that future flying phoners will hold their breath, either.

Visiting Normandy

One of the decided advantages of living in Paris, besides living in Paris, is the ability to explore the countryside on the weekend. This weekend I had the opportunity to take a quick trip to Normandy.

Some American friends invited me to visit, at the chaumiere that their family has owned for 40 years. For them, a place of fond memories of childhood summers spent lovingly restoring and furnishing a beautiful but once-ramshackle compound of buildings. For me, a chance to escape the "golden prison" of Paris and marvel at huge trees bending in the breeze, smell freshly-mown grass, and to wake up with the cows and an explosion of birdsong.

You can get to Heaven. It takes only 1-1/2 hours on A-13.

Directions to get to the house were so delightfully country-esque. "Go past three fields, take a left at the white house, go past the manoir that you can't see any more; then the road takes a dip, and go right at the allee of trees. If you reach the forest, you've gone too far." I missed the turn and, ending up in the village by mistake, waited to be retrieved by my hosts. I parked between the local restaurant (which serves up intoxicatingly delicious 5-course meals for about 16 euros) and the small chapel.

Villages in Normandy seem so magical, and yet there is a deja-vu familiar quality to them. I finally realized that it came from having watched so many World War II movies and television shows in my youth. Driving through Normandy, I think I subconsciously expected American "soldiers" such as Vic Morrow or Lee Marvin, in Army uniform, to spring out from behind a grey stone building to surprise the enemy and save the day.

I don't know about other girls my age, but when I was in grade school I was a die-hard Combat! fan every Tuesday night (I think I can still hum the theme song) and thought that The Dirty Dozen was one of the most romantic films of all time. Not for any love scenes -- I don't remember any -- but for the thrilling romance of bravery, valor, and ... all those men in uniform. When I watched those action-packed dramas, and Good triumphed over Bad, I felt that all was right with the world.

In Normandy, it still feels that way.