Since late last week, there hasn’t been any connection at the wifi park by my place, and it’s really pissing me off. We were supposed to have our internet sorted out yesterday, but the guy who was helping Gui couldn’t hook it up because he said our phone line didn’t exist, which is a bag of horse poop because Gui called me twice on the line to test it. Still, it doesn’t take away from the fact that the park that advertises free internet access isn’t actually providing their claimed service to the public. And that pisses me off even more. Don’t get my hopes all high, get me skipping my way to the park, only to slam a “Problem loading page” in my face. Get your shiz fixed!

UPDATE: TWO SECONDS after I finished typing this, and 5 minutes before my low battery balloon popped up, I got a connection. Freakin' jerks.

I’m ironing my dishcloths. Oh, and my bath towels, too. It’s not very common for people here to own dryers. We don’t even have a dedicated space or plug for one in our apartment. So, instead of throwing all my wet linens and things into the dryer so they can be all warm and fuzzy before I put them away, I have to carefully hang it all on a drying rack (which is currently in the middle of our living room) and wait a day or so for it to be crispy dry. And, I do mean crispy. Who wants to bundle up with a stiff, scratchy blanket or dry off with a rough, hard towel? Not me. So, to smooth everything out a bit, I’ve taken to ironing my stuff after it’s dried – a little tidbit I learned, courtesy of Gui’s mom. I always wondered why she ironed his towels and socks and sheets. I just figured she was being your typical French mother from Italian descent. Now, I get it.

Doing all this ironing has got me thinking. Well, thinking about ironing. I don’t mind ironing. It’s a bit annoying at the moment because we don’t have a proper ironing board and I don’t really have a system down yet for the laundry. But, I figured out why people like me and my sister don’t mind ironing so much. It’s a really great opportunity for us to be in complete control of something in every way. So much so that we can achieve utter perfection in our end result. It’s not often that perfectionists get to where they want to be, but when you have a steaming iron in your hand and a wrinkled dishcloth in front of you, there’s nothing keeping you from making it into the perfect, wrinkle-free linen you desperately want it to become.

I’m sure this all sounds a little strange, but I’ve really thought about it. And it makes sense – at least to me. But, as much as I’m enjoying achieving perfection and all, I’m surely not made for all housewife-ish duties. I don’t particularly enjoy doing the dishes, the laundry, sweeping or mopping. I enjoy cooking, but we haven’t done so much of that lately since we’re not doing much grocery shopping until after we get back from Texas. And, I like grocery shopping, but like I said… So right now, at least until we get back from vacation and I start taking my French classes, I’ll have to be satisfied with being a desperately-wishing-to-not-be-a-desperate-housewife housewife in France.

This time of year in Paris is when Parisians decidedly make an excuse to meet the neighbors. It’s called the Fête de Voisins, and it’s the equivalent to a block party in the States, only instead of closing down neighborhood streets, folks take it to the common area of their buildings (although I learned that when the weather is particularly great, buildings on small streets will put up barricades and have a combined Fête de Voisins). I’d been looking forward to this for over a week now. We had to sign up for what we planned to bring, and after waiting to see what others had put on the list, I decided to bring a pasta dish, hummus with warm pita, and a liter of Coke.

Even though I’d been the one to convince Gui to go to the Fête in the first place, I was a little nervous about the whole thing once the day arrived. All those questions start rolling through my mind...will they hate the fact that I’m American?...will they be offended that I can’t properly speak French, yet I’m living in their country?...will anyone speak English to me?...will they like my pasta or think its weird?

The poster said everything would begin at 8pm, so right at 8, I hollered at Gui to help me take everything down. I knew we’d be one of the first to arrive, and we were, with the exception of one tenant and the host of the party (who we later came to know as the “president” of our building, even though he didn’t live there). We chatted for a bit – Gui let them know I didn’t speak French very well, and the first female we met, who happened to be young and very Austin-y I thought, spoke perfect English to me the entire night.

It all turned out pretty well, but there were some noticeable differences in how things are done around these parts compared to what I’m used to. No one served themselves from someone else’s dish until the person who brought the dish started serving it. So, that meant that no one touched my pasta until I finally got up, served myself and Gui some and asked if anyone would like some pasta. Same for the hummus. It was pretty bizarre, and it kind of bothered me that I had to ask if anyone was interested in eating the food I’d prepared – talk about being put on the spot.

We met the lady who lives next door to us, and found out she’s been living in her place for the past 50 years - we learned a lot about our building from her. Apparently, before she lived there, during the war, a bomb blew out the fourth floor of the building and when the got around to rebuilding it, they added another (5^th) floor – which is the floor we live on now. It’s pretty neato, actually. The rest of the folks who live on other floors are a great mix of young and middle-aged peeps, all who were incredibly nice and completely welcoming to us newcomers. There’s only one proper family that lives in our building, and I’m not complaining about that. The two kids, though, were rather well-behaved and their parents seemed to have them in check, which is always a good thing.

I was definitely nervous for no reason, since everyone seemed to be interested in my story – how I got here, how I’m adjusting, what I’ll be doing. It was comforting to have my worries laid to rest, and to now know a few familiar faces around my new ‘hood.

Our first task was to pick up the sofa-bed from some peeps in north Paris who were selling it on Craigslist. Man, it’s a big sofa. It was a great deal for the kind of sofa it was, but after seeing the guys take it from the 3^rd-floor apartment to put in the truck, I was having second thoughts about how it was going to get into our 6^th-floor apartment. We have an elevator, but if you’ve ever seen an elevator in Paris, it’s not usually big enough to fit more than three people (or two Americans…hehe). Well, my thoughts were right on because it was the biggest b!*ch trying to get the stupid thing up the winding steps of our building. Talk about a nightmare. After nearly an hour of heaving-and-hoeing, we finally made it to our apartment. Now, you’d think it’d be easy-peasey at this point, but no way. Our apartment is positioned in such a way that it’s nearly impossible to fit the couch in easily without first calculating the Pythagorean Theorem and angular degrees of how to property position the thing to fit through our living room door.

When we finally managed to get the couch into the right spot, it was off to the next task of sifting through the aisles of Ikea – the nearest one being outside of Paris. At this point, it’s a little after noon and we’re pretty hungry and tired, but we trek on, knowing that we have lots to get done at Ikea, including picking up our bed, our table and chairs, and nearly everything else for the kitchen. After spending about two hours scouring the place for everything on our list, we made it to the checkout counter with two full baskets. Thinking everything is all hunky-dory, we swipe our bank card, punch in the code and get declined. We try again. Declined. And again – but for half the amount. Declined. What. The. Hell? Gui left the checkbook at home, and neither one of us is sure if we have enough on our American accounts to pay for everything in dollars (knowing that charging it in dollars would be really stupid). Gui makes a call to the bank who tell him that there shouldn’t be a problem, so to try again. But, it’s Saturday, and only stupid people work for the bank on Saturday because what he fails to tell us is that we’ve spent more than our limit for the month and there’s no way they can do anything about upping our limit for this month until Monday. So, we think we’ll try to get the money from an ATM – it worked earlier in the day when we paid for the sofa, so it must work now. Only this time, the nearest (and only, apparently) ATM in this poor excuse for a city is about a kilometer away in city center. No, there is not one single ATM in this massive “American-style” shopping center or anywhere near it. So, off we go uphill, downhill, through the town. About 20 minutes later, we’re at the ATM and what do you know, we get declined! I’m totally done at this point, and we decide to forget it at this point.

Because the truck rental was just for one day, we had to return it that day, and we ended up getting our stuff the next day using two small cars. It somehow all fit, but we still aren’t sure how. After the chaos at Ikea, I was so burnt out from the day and wanted nothing but food and sleep. Gui, being the good husband that he is, stopped at the Italian food shop in town and cooked me a wonderful pasta al’arrabiata for my birthday dinner which I thoroughly enjoyed with the nice Lambrusco he’d also picked out. The day was horrendous, and it’s certainly the worst way I could have spent my first birthday in Paris (which fell on a Saturday this year!!). But, I’ll never forget it and I’m at least grateful for the happy ending.

We fit it in...not sure how. Thank Goodness for Ikea engineering.

One of two full cars - the day after.

Chef Guillaume.

Pouring the Lambrusco.


A fine birthday dinner.