30% Crappy Television Watching
20% Shopping
10% Physical Excercise
10% Sunbathing
10% Eating
20% Other

which makes for a combined stress level of roughly 0.2 on a scale of 100.

A trip to Cedar Point - the best amusement park in the world - was thrown in for good measure, but really - it just gets thrown into the "other" category along with fun things like:

- taking the long way home just cause it feels that good to be driving again
- reading another Paul Auster book
- blasting NPR at all hours of the day
- walking the dog
- trying on my four (yes FOUR) new pairs of shoes over and over again
- talking to the dog about my four new pairs of shoes
- asking the dog for his opinion
- drinking mochas even though the weather really didn't match (mochas are for cold weather)
- etc

None of these things in the "other" category can really be qualified as great tension builders, either, now can they?

Actually, I didn't particularly want to come back to France. Which was a rather funny feeling. Regardless, when I finally did come back, I came back not only relaxed and refreshed, but also with new shoes.

And that puts any girl in good spirits.

Although I have only been back on French soil for three days, I was not pleased to see the 340 euros worth of bills I have to pay, nor that my refrigerator was not only empty, but covered in some odd-smelling brown good, nor that my boyfriend had killed my Bonsai (that sounds like a horror movie name to me: "My Boyfriend Killed my Bonsai")...And combined these little, ridiculous things were beginning to add up and stress me out. Just a little flickering bit of tension in the crick of my neck.

BUT that all changed yesterday when the Boy announced to me that he had quit his job, but that he'll still be paid for quite some time. What does this mean ladies and gentlemen?

I'M GOING TO SPAIN AND PORTUGAL. And he's coming with me. Takeoff in about two weeks.

Pretty, cheap jewelry. Cute, cheap skivvies. Funky, cheap hats. Functional, cheap spatulas. Groovy, cheap rugs.

There was a point at which I wanted to buy the eight dollar body pillow and the twenty dollar rug before I realized that these things would have to be brought back to the other side of the ocean. My thought: Target needs to install overseas. I just don't understand how a country can fully function without it.

I also decided that when I do move back to the States, I will allow myself a few things to ease the painful, painful transition that will be my life. These things are:

- an old, beat-up VW bug (provided I don't live in NYC or San Francisco or somewhere equally as equipped with public transportation. If living in a temperate climate, the VW WILL be a convertible)
- A $500 shopping spree at Target in which I will buy cute things for my home
- A dog

Now, the VW and the shopping spree are obviously dependent on finances, because I just can't up and spend $500. Or up and buy a car, no matter how crappy and beat-up it is. But once I ever DO have the $500, they will be spent at Target and I will buy many beautiful things.

Have you ever seen their appliance aisle? I could spend days in there.

I've often said about France that the selection is always very slim. At the grocery store, you have two types of toothpaste which you can choose from. Three types of laundry detergent. Maybe four types of shampoo. But then, conversly, 500 types of cheese. The problem: I love laundry detergent and hate cheese. So what I really need is a Target in France - so much selection for all things not-food-related. And such smooth shopping carts, too. I've never had a bad one there.

The city itself was at it's heyday in the early 20's and 30's, when the auto business was experiencing a major boom and the city bars and clubs were hoppin'. Consequently, the city has remnants of beautiful art deco buildings and fascinating architectural works from that period in American history.

Note, however, the use of the word "remnants." Detroit is the city that WAS, and may never BE again. Big, gorgeous mansions sit on the side of the decrepid streets as crackheads sleepily walk by their now abandoned porches. Kdogg and I estimate that maybe one in ten businesses is still up and running, the remaining providing a cityscape of boarded up windows and burnt-out second stories that the mayor is too overwhelmed with to destroy. Of the one and ten businesses that has managed to keep its doors open to the public, maybe one in three is a liquor store. People loiter and stand near public phones, no doubt up to more harm than good in a city that appears to have no public parks, no safe places for children, no cozy neighborhoods. Street after street after street is filled with cracked windows, broken doorways, and sunken porches.

Slightly nervous, the two of us turn down a residential street filled with what were once magnificent homes. The luxurious brick houses with full, wrap-around porches are now either abandoned or barely habitable. Weeds fill up yards in front of those houses that still have residents; the other half of the houses are left to either the squatters or the rats. Children bicycle up and down the potholed street, and as I pass a house with a sinking, cryptic porch, I notice a little pudgy girl jumping down its front steps, staring at the strangers with a detached yet curious look. Her house is a public hazard - on the brink of collapse but still standing - as is every almost house on her street and every street within a ten-block radius. I think of my childhood home, my green lawn, my willow trees and jungle gyms and ponds. She has no green grass, nothing safe to dangle from, nowhere to be a carefree kid. I hope for her - it's all I can do.

I always tell people that if they want to go to Detroit, they should reconsider. But now I think I will tell them that they must see it to believe it. Detroit is a lesson in how not to let such a magnificent place go to shit, and it is evidence of how little we reach out to help sinking communities in need.

The most disappointing thing about Detroit is not the state it is in, but how much it has lost. How does a city with so much poverty and such a depressing environment stay above water? How does what was once a booming city of industry become such a wasteland?

Still, I think there is hope for the city. Underneath all the scrub and dirt and cracked buildings and sleepy sidewalks is a promising place. Beautiful doorways lead to enormous buildings with eloquent art deco entryways and huge ceilings. Remnants of Detroit's glory days line the streets in the tumbling theaters and the ruins of concert halls. This city, if saved, could be amongst one of the most amazing places our country has to offer.

Kdogg and I turn on Jefferson Ave, and we take it down to the very edges of Detroit, where the city casually backs up against neighboring Grosse Pointe - one of the richest zip codes in Michigan, possibly the country. One Detroit city block is filled with drug dealers and broken windows, followed by two planted trees on Jefferson Ave's median. Beyond the two wimpy trees lies a wooden green sign, with 'Welcome to Grosse Pointe' written in swirly letters. Suddenly, the median is filled with lush, blooming plants, and small, independent businesses line the street. Tall, university-like buildings rise up along the shady, flower-potted small-town streets, as if, less than two blocks away, an entire city wasn't wasting away.

A little girl rides her pink tricycle alone down the starchy-white sidewalk on the Grosse Pointe side of Jefferson Avenue. A block and a half away, in Detroit, a group of young men loiter supiciously on a closed-down drugstore's corner. Nobody dare cross the line that seperates them, marked only by a few trees and a welcome sign.

Yet the difference is clearly marked in black and white - both literally and figuratively. Every American should be forced to experience such a disturbing division of race, a division between rich and poor, between helplessness and ignorance. It is frightening and disgusting and, honestly, overwhelming. But Kdogg and I deem it wortwhile, somethingto be seen if it is to be believed.

Afterwards, we discuss how hard it must be for anybody from this depressed community to rise from its ashes. How could they not be angry at their affluent neighbors as their city turns to rubble? We talk of education - how it must be difficult to obtain a good one in such an environment, how even for those that do, it must be hard to find the avenues necessary to get out of a cesspool of decay.

As we talk, we point out beautiful building after beautiful building that has been abandoned and left to waste. We pass by a sprawling lawn leading up to an ornate white building just off of one of the major avenues.

"What's that?" I ask, as we creep by.
"It's the public library," she says back to me. After a beat, she clarifies, "It's boarded up. Closed."

I feel that sums it up.

Let me reiterate that I really like the city. I think it has a lot of potential, and it holds a lot of our country's history in its falling bricks and abandoned warehouses. I am just upset that the rest of the country - and especially nearby communities - sat by and watched Detroit's decline without recognizing its worth as a historic city. Companies would invest, were it not so run-down. Families would move there, were it more safe. It could be the lively metropolis it once was, had we not let twenty years of hard times get the better of it.

- Saying hello to my lovely and hilarious family: Maybe this time I will actually score some points in Trivial Pursuit. I would also be interested in learning bridge, because I have successfully avoided it for 23 years, and I think that I want to get the game in sometime under the upcoming quarter-of-a-century marker. Rumors have it that there might be badminton (sp?), and I WILL win the invisible Badminton Championship trophy for sure. If the weather doesn't permit, we can just bust out the logic puzzles and have a good time. Oh, we're a wild, wild family, we are.

- Getting a deep, dark tan: Kdogg, my best friend from California, is flying out and we have a very impressive summer mission: get blond, get tan. So God better cooperate and bring on the sun. Kdogg is aparently at least six leaps ahead of me on the deep, dark tanning scale, but just as I thought I would go out and catch some rays, somebody decided that Parisian trees were thirsty. So I suppose I'll have to do an accelerated deep, dark tanning session or two before she shows. The Badminton tournament could really serve a double function in that sense.

- Balancing a healthy diet of physical activity and mental numbness: The beautiful thing about the United States is that there is a lot of space. And so that means that I can find a nice little place to go running without inhaling too much car exhaust, that I can snag a bike and take it to the local drugstore (where I will stand amazed at the aisles and aisles of choices made available to me), and that I can actually learn to rollerblade, finally. These are all appealing things to someone coming from a dense, cobblestoned city like Paris. Cobblestone and rollerblades, people. Not a beginner's material. So yes. I will run, jump, skip and hop to my heart's content.

On the other hand, I will also invest a serious amount of time and effort into at least getting an accurate and semi-diverse glimpse into current American pop culture. I will rent movies. I will go see films in the theater. I will watch Jeopardy! (ok, not pop culture, but I love it so shut up), and I will get my fill of the appropriate television shows.

I propose doing this in the same way that I line up the movies I plan on seeing in Paris: I buy the guide, and circle the times/places for whatever movie I want to see.

Here are the programs I am on the lookout for:

MTV Real World (Paris!)
The Amazing Race (more about that after I see it)

Ok. Well, obviously the list was rather short. Please help me out. I am so pathetic. I used to be a Pop Culture Goddess.

I will also get my hair cut. I almost have a mullet right now. Growing my hair out hurts.