Recently in Paris Category

I got in trouble today. Beccarah was a bit upset that I hadn't posted any more photos. So, I threw some more up on flickr in no particular order. Have at it. There are so many more but I am just waiting for the laundry to finsh and then am on my way to bed. Way to big of a beast for me to tackle this evening.

Meanwhile, I am starting to see food at the supermarket with expiration dates that are on or after my flight out of Paris. In other words: departure is imminent.

I got very sad about the whole thing while on the bus today, peering out at the familiar streets knowing that I might not see them again for a long, long time. I suddenly want to rush to Belleville to eat some bad Chinese food and then speed off to the Marais to sit in a cafe for awhile before zipping up to Montmartre to walk along the quiet residential streets just one last time. Of course, most of this won't happen because a) I have a baby to take care of and b) I have a move to plan. Oh, and c) I am usually too tired to be bothered. But, but. While on the bus, I do have moments of wanting to breathe in this city fully before leaving. I know Paris won't go anywhere, and it will change little in my absence. But I also know that I will change in the meantime, and I would like to just freeze my life as it is right now so that I can take it out and look at it again whenever I please. I guess that's what a photo is for, but it would seem very odd to have photos of all the Parisian streets that hold my memories. There are just way, way too many.

One:

Things in France can take awhile, but six months seemed a long time to wait to get reimbursed by my insurance company. I had been to a few doctor's who gave me a feuille de soins instead of using my carte vitale, and after Thursday's ultrasound, I thought it doubly important to check up on my reimbursements. The ultrasound cost 90 euros (which I realize is cheap by US standards, but it dug quite a hole in my pocket) and I had to pay upfront; the doctor then said, "So this is all on your card, no paperwork for you..." It occured to me that maybe I should check into getting some of that money back.

So I called my insurance company and they said, "Yeah, you have six payments that are queued up to be sent to you."

"Wow! Good news. Do I have to do something special?" I asked, realizing that since I haven't had a carte vitale in the five years I have been using French insurance, I wasn't entirely sure on how it worked.

"No, but we'll need your bank information in order to transfer the money," the insurance lady said.

"You have my bank information, you pull out money every month from my account," I pointed out.

"Yes, but that's in order for you to pay your monthly fees. We need the account info to send money to you."

"It's the same information," I said, surprised at the stupidity of our conversation.

"I know, but you'll need to send it in," she responded.

"But you have it all right there!"

"Yes, but we need you to send it in..." even she realized that this was ridiculous at this point.

"Ok, fine. Where do I send it to?"

"The same address you sent it to before," she said, and sort of chuckled.

"Ok... so I send the same information to the same address and you're going to magically know what it's for?" I asked.

"Put a little note with it: Here is my account information so that you can carry out my reimbursements."

Only in France.

Two:

I signed up for online banking the other day. The web site said, "Sign up online!" with a button. So I clicked it, and that led me to a .pdf that I had to print out and send in by mail.

I found that sort of ironic, "Sign up online" usually means that the whole process is done online. There should be no stamps involved.

But I let it slide, as France is still a few steps behind in the internet revolution.

Two weeks later, I get a letter (IN THE MAIL) that says, "Thank you for signing up for online banking with our bank. To access your account, you are going to need your customer login and your code. Please see your account representative to find out your customer login. Your code is at the bottom of this page."

So now I have to go to my bank (which is literally all the way across town) in order to see my banker, so that I can login to my account.

Signing up online has never been so easy! It just involves printing, signing and sending a form, waiting for a snail mail letter back, and then taking said letter and yourself physically to the bank to talk to somebody about getting an access code.

I'm still looking for the "online" part of that sign up process...

A litlte busy over here. In a good way. Time is flying with the visitors. That always happens, what with the walking and the scenic outings and the outrageous conversation. Lots of activity and laughing and then I drop into bed at night and pass out cold. Mysteriously, I cannot sleep past 7:45 am anymore. Even on a Sunday.

Also, the sun just came out.

And tomorrow I have a midterm I have to study for.

Ironic, after three consecutive days of cold and rain.

My apartment has two rooms: one big main room with an open kitchen and sitting area, and then a bedroom. The main room is extremely quiet, nothing but the hum of the refridgerator. The bedroom is also quiet, but one side wall lines up with the neighbor's bedroom wall. The first two mornings in this apartment, his alarm woke me up. It is set for 8.00. I can make out the words of whatever song is playing on the radio station his alarm is set to, that's how clearly I can hear through the wall.

This isn't really a problem as he is a quiet neighbor and seems very respectful. I am a little worried about the baby crying at night and keeping him up; I think I might have a talk with him if I sense it gets to be a problem. For right now, we have a few months of relative quiet to enjoy, first.

Yesterday was an exhausting day, I can't even express how tired I was by the time I got home. I've noticed that I am slowing down some now, yet I think I am still doing just as much activity. I'm not sure how this is working out mathematically, but it means that I am steadily more and more exhausted each night.

Last night, I got home about 8.00-ish, talked on the phone some, and then opted to settle in bed for a bit and watch the second half of a "Prison Break" episode that I had had to cut short a few days prior.

I watch everything on The Boy's laptop, and I attach headphones to save him from having to listen to the tinny sound of escaping convicts. Occasionally, we'll talk a bit while I'm watching, so I leave one earphone in and one out so that I can hear him if he calls to me from the other room. He'll often just shout out requests for translations, which I provide, but I often have to ask for him to repeat the word in question as I'm usually a little distracted by the action on screen.

Last night, I thought I started getting some weird sort of interference on my earphone, and I plugged up my free ear to double-check if I was hearing correctly. No, no, the muted noises I heard weren't coming from the laptop, so I paused the show and tried to figure out where they were coming from. Suddenly, I recognized all-too-clearly the sounds of my neighbor and his girlfriend in bed. It took me about 2 seconds to figure out what was happening because, as I have said, I can pretty much hear everything.

I jumped up and ran into the other room and said, "Hey! Guess what! You can hear the neighbors having sex!" The Boy looked at me like I was crazy and said, "I'm working..." but giggled a little to himself. I clarified, "Remember how clearly you can hear the radio? This is just as clear!" And it's true. I definetly heard the intimate details of their love life for those 10 total seconds it took me to both hear and understand what the ruckus was.

So then, being a perv, I ran back into the bedroom to double check.

"Oh. Well. That didn't last long," I said, curiously disappointed.

So I might have a harder time having that is-the-baby-bothering-you conversation with him in a few months. I mean, now that I know something so personal about him. I feel a little sorry for his girlfriend, too.

I am at the kiosk, buying two magazines (for research purposes, mind you) today. It's sunny, unseasonably warm, and people are (gasp) smiling at one another for NO REASON AT ALL. The kiosk worker, obviously enjoying his work much more now that the sun has come out, says an enthusiastic "4,99" as I simultaneaously plop down a five-euro note.

"Merci," I say firmly and gather up my things, making it clear that I don't really need that 1-cent back. But, having encountered this phenomenon repeatedly over the years, I leave a slightly open window of opportunity in case he should misunderstand my signals. The "Need a penny, take one..." mindset so common to Americans is just completely lost on the French.

One time, I dropped a 2-cent coin**, took a half second to find it on the floor, and then another half-second to decide it wasn't worth bending over to pick up. Call me lazy, but I hate "pennies", no matter what the currency. As I started to step away, a woman tapped me on the shoulder and said, "Mademoiselle, your coin is right there. I saw you looking for it..." So then of course I HAD to pick it up. But Jesus, what good is it going to do me hanging out in the bottom of my purse alongside all those other pennies (which, I'm sorry, I am never going to put into a roll and take to the bank. I'm just not. It is not worth the headache for 1,22 euros)

"And here you go," says the kiosk man, holding out a coin. Damn, I think, They just never understand... I DON'T CARE ABOUT THE PENNY!!!

But I like his smile, so I return one and thank him for the change.

"Oop-là!" he says, "That's a 2-cent piece!" and he frantically grabs a 1-cent piece in exchange.

I laugh and say, "I don't really care about 1 cent, in the end. It doesn't make a whole lot of difference, does it?" I'm trying to be jovial while still pointing out that, hell, this is just a cent, people.

In response, he looks at me quizzically and wishes me a good day.

Ok then.

**I've said it before and I'll say it again: why oh why did they make a 2-cent coin?

Two things:

1. At metro Strasbourg-Saint Denis, there is a poster for that Owen Wilson movie called "You, Me and Dupree." The poster is annoying, in the same way that Owen Wilson films are annoying (yes, I said it). There are probably 15 of them lining the wall, but I love one of them in particular. Scribbled across the top part of the poster, in the typical felt-tip marker style of cheap graffitti, somebody wrote in French, "I prefer Jules Verne." And honestly? I sort of love Paris - and by extension all of France - for even *thinking* of writing that kind of graffitti, let alone actually going through with it.

2. My regular supermarket is huge, the closest thing that Paris gets to Wal-Mart. The top floor is all clothing and home goods, and the bottom floor is all food items. I have the store mapped out in my head, so much so that The Boy - on the FEW occasions he goes grocery shopping with me - just goes into a strange sort of sub-space while I pluck things through the aisles and work my carefully plotted and efficiency-tested route from vegetables to dry goods.

Recently, however, the store has undergone a transformation, and they are entirely remodeling the bottom floor. At first, they shut off the veggie station with massive plastic barriers, and I looked on suspiciously as wiring became increasingly exposed along the ceiling. Next, they moved all of the refrigerated goods into the section where they used to have pots and pans, and let me tell you -- the Frenchies were NOT down with having a reduced cheese section.

The first trip to the grocery since the renovations began was pure chaos. The same amount of people were cramped into a smaller-than-usual spac, all of them turning in circles or second-guessing where to find canned corn. I was disturbed because, as a creature of habit, I could no longer do my veggies to dairy to meat to dry goods loop, as the dairy was now split in two on opposite sides of the store.

As they have finally started getting things in order, I've been redrawing my mental map. Some things haven't changed, but I did find it funny to note one new development: the diet/heath-food aisle has been placed directly opposite of the candy aisle. I would think somebody would have interjected during the meeting on how to set up the new store, saying that maybe this wasn't the most practical solution. But really I think they're taking a sick pleasure in watching those health-food types go through the mini-war each and every time they choose the rice cakes over the Malamars. I wouldn't be surprised if they installed a surveillance camera, just for shits and giggles during staff meetings.

Did I take this too far in my head today? Probably. Maybe they really just weren't thinking.