Coffee, chickens, and Paris.

It's early here on the East Coast, and I really need some coffee. Won't you join me?



So anyway, I came in this morning and spotted a new addition to the office's, umm, eclectic decor. A wicker chicken has roosted on the reception-area coffee table. I know for a fact it was not here when I left yesterday. Nor do I know its purpose here, as it was not filled with leftover Halloween candy (to my great dismay). Some of you may read some of the same blogs I read - there's one I like called "Whatever, Mom," for whose author the ownership of first one, then several wicker chickens has deep philosophical and/or metaphorical meaning. So, here you go, ko_karma, this one's for you (perhaps you can enlighten me as to its significance in my life):



So finally, on to the third random topic du jour: Paris. No blog of mine could exist for long without touching on Paris. I have been there twice, both times with my husband. The first time was for just a day and a half in the middle of the mad pan-European dash that was our honeymoon. That was not nearly long enough. Our hotel room was a cruddy little room in a Best Western in the Opera district. We walked as much of the city as we possibly could, though, and I so successfully imprinted the feel of the city on my mind that I dreamed about it for years afterwards. The whole time, I fervently wished we had stayed for less time either in London or in boring suburban Trier, Germany so as to spend more time in Paris.

Finally, two years later, I threw fiscal prudence to the winds and charged us a week-and-a-half long proper Parisian holiday. This time, we networked a stay in a luxury Paris flat in a posh part of town through the wealthy father of a friend of a friend. We packed our best clothes and pretended to be another couple entirely for the whole time. We ate the best bread and cheese, drank the best wines. And most importantly, we walked and walked and walked. We made a point of walking through every arrondisment and every important neighborhood. I found, to my great surprise, that my high school and college French, though several years distant, had stuck to a great degree, and I was able to communicate surprisingly well. Everyone we met was lovely, friendly and helpful, possibly as a result.

I came back twice as deeply in love with Paris. Since then, a piece of my mind has been given over to scheming ways I might get to live there for a year or two. (Perhaps pursue an LLM in international law at a law school there?) But I can't figure out how to do that and still pay the mortgage back home. And of course, everything has changed with my daughter's arrival. So I think my next Paris trip might be several years from now, and I will take my daughter with me, and we will play at being French and dress and dine well the whole time. And we will stay in an apartment again rather than in a crappy, overpriced hotel, perhaps in one of the flats on this site: http://www.ilparisapartments.com/ With any luck, she will love the civilized adventure of it as much as I do.

And now, a totally random Paris picture I found on the Internet because I don't have any of my own photographs with me right now.



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