“God, it’s so painful when something that’s so close is still so far out of reach…”

That is how I’ve been feeling the past couple of days.

No more cryptic melodramatic entries, I promise.

Less than one week until my (sort of) big kid job starts.

Also, when Axel is speaking English and uses a French word because he forgets it’s not English it’s pretty much the most adorable thing in the world. (“These cookies are not vraiment crushed.” “Can you put this in the poubelle?” “Anouk is my friend at my ecole and I love her.”) He also pronounces chocolate “choco-layte” which has nothing to do with the way it’s pronounced in English or French. (You could argue that it’s phonetic in English but he can’t read anything but his own name yet.)

If you’re reading this and you’re an assistant in the Paris area (or an assistant in any other area planning on coming through Paris) we should hang out. Leave me a comment.

(If you are on the other side of the world in the Seattle area, you should go to Sketchfest on Saturday to see some of my friends, because sometimes they are funny.)

I’m an old person.

I’ve been noticing that I’ve been getting a lot more “madame” than “mademoiselle” this time around. I’m not sure what has happened in the past two years to make me look so old, but it was particularly troublesome today when I was babysitting Axel in the the Parc des Batignolles, which is an area in my neighborhood that would have been used for the Olympics in 2012 if Paris had beaten London for the spot, but was turned into a series of playgrounds and skateparks when they lost. Axel at one point sped off on his bike past some boys who were about 12 or 13, and when they saw me running after him said “Attends ta maman!” (“Wait for your mommy!”)

What was worse was when Axel was playing on the half pipe with a girl who looked to be about 10 or 11, and some other teenaged kid in skateboard gear asked if they were my kids. It’s bad enough that someone would think I was Axel’s mother…he’s 4, so while me being his mother is both unlikely and impractical, it’s at least biologically possible. But do I really look old enough to have mothered a 10 or 11 year old? At 21?

What has happened to me in the past two years? Do I wear mom jeans? Is my haircut too matronly? Inquiring minds want to know.

Pitter pattering

I have started babysitting a four year old boy who lives in my neighborhood after school. His name is Axel, which is badass in a celebrity baby name sort of way. His family spent all of last year in New York City and he consequently speaks better English than a good portion of the adults I know in France. He says hello to all of the shopkeepers on the street as we pass by and he won’t let me leave to go home without giving him a hug. I don’t really know if I want babies but if I ever have them, between him and Capucine, I definitely want French babies.

Today I found out my friend Eric from Seattle and one of his friends from college are going to come stay here for two months starting in November. This is pretty good news because Eric is my photo buddy and I will hopefully be encouraged to take more pictures when he’s here. Also, I’ve met up with other assistants in the area three times now and have met two from Minnesota, one of whom is from Burnsville which is practically spitting distance from Chaska. So I pretty much went 5,000 miles across the planet to hang out with people from home. I’m pretty okay with that.

Today I realized I left all my favorite jewelry at home because I put it in a separate container to take it to Los Angeles a few months ago and forgot to put it back in my regular jewelry box. Some of it is also worth too much money for me to feel comfortable having it mailed. I am not okay with that.

This week was the Rentree du Cinema, which meant movie tickets were only four euros. I saw Inglorious Basterds and the conclusions I have drawn are: 1) No dairy farmer from northern France in the forties would speak such fluent English. This stuck out to me more than all of the other more glaring historical inaccuracies. 2) The French cannot translate southern jokes (i.e. Stonewall Jackson, moonshine) 3) French people think Brad Pitt speaking broken Italian with a southern accent is delightful. I have never heard the French laugh so hard in a movie without George Clooney in it.

Here is a picture of Sacre Coeur after I had to yell at sketchy bracelet maker guys to stay away from me, and before it started raining.

Il y a toujours de bordel partout.

1. I have been in France for 5 days and until about an hour ago my room looked like this:

but I cleaned it up, I promise, Mom and Dad.

2. This apartment has been in Catherine’s family since it was built in 1907, and our 92-year-old neighbor was her great-grandmother’s best friend. Also apparently the roof was used as a sniper station for the Germans during the war and everyone who lives here is too weirded out to go up there, even though most of them probably weren’t born yet. It’s a shame because the view from this apartment is so cool, but I might just be insensitive. Also, this is the kitchen floor:

3. There is in French administration, like in comedy, a rule of threes. You have to go to an office an average of three times before you will have all the paperwork you need to do whatever you are trying to accomplish. I finally got my bank account open after trying three times. Like the rule in comedy, more than three times is tedious and frustrating, but less than three is unnerving and suspicious. I only had to go twice to get my metro card, which makes me suspect that in the coming weeks something is going to go wrong with it.

4. The banker who opened my account who was probably not much older than me said, “You shouldn’t have come to Paris. You should have gone to the south or just stayed in the US. Everything here is expensive and no one knows how to have any fun.” Sorry, pal.

5. I tried to call my school today to figure out what my hours are going to be (my job doesn’t start until October 1st) and they HUNG UP ON ME. The fact that they never sent me their phone number (I had to dig it up online) and the fact that they have the ugliest amateur website in the history of the internet (seriously, watch the flash intro) makes me question whether this is actually a high school or a front for something else. Next week I am showing up in person whether they want me there or not.

6. My jetlag has turned into narcolepsy, because my sleeping pattern has come in two or three hour increments throughout the day. This means I have fallen asleep in noisy public parks three times.

7. There was a law passed in France last spring that would create a three strikes law for illegal downloading (they would send you two warning emails and then cut off your internet on the third one but still make you pay for it.) In June it was gutted by the constitutional committee (for a number of reasons, one of which was that the law said your internet provider could punish you without actually providing proof you committed a violation.) This is good for me because I would be pissed if I couldn’t keep up with Mad Men and the new season of Dexter starts at the end of the month.*

8. There are a lot of attractive men in France with really hideous haircuts. FG’s theory is that those guys are the single guys because the ones with girlfriends have changed their boyfriend’s hair to suit their fancy. I’m not so sure about this.

9. I live here.

That’s all.

*Illegal downloading is illegal and you shouldn’t do it. Okay.

Et voila.

I am starting a blog about living in Paris even though there are already too many blogs about living in Paris because I think I need to keep a better record of it this time than I did before, because my friends and family might be interested and because the Assistants in France forum suggests it might be good networking. 

I arrived an hour early yesterday at 6 AM and was dropped off at what will be my apartment, at least temporarily. It is 102 years old and the size of a shoebox but I can see this out the left side of my window:

and this out the right side:

I can also see the Arc de Triomphe and the Montparnasse tower from the kitchen (though I, like everyone else in Paris, avoid looking at the Montparnasse tower if possible.)

I drank tea with Catherine, the lady I live with (not good for jetlag) and then had the best nap of my life (also not good for jetlag.) When I got up I helped her moved some stuff to her sister’s place, watched her get in a fight over a parking spot (“Mais tu as un Mercedes, tu peux pas payer trois euros pour garer la voiture quoi?!”) and then hung out with some of her friends who live on a boat by Bastille.

I drank coffee (still not good for jetlag)

They repainted the roof,

and compared tans.

When we got back I had gotten an email from the other Catherine (my ex-host mother) telling me I was invited to dinner in 45 minutes, so I booked it to the 13th as fast as I could. She and FG (my ex host brother) are pretty much exactly the same as I left them, their dog hasn’t gotten any bigger, and there is a nice boy from California living in my old room. I drank (at their insistence) three glasses of wine and some sort of Croation liquor, which contributed to both my jet lag and me wandering around my neighborhood in circles for half an hour before figuring out where I lived again.

Other things:

1) Today I saw a girl who was probably ten or eleven with a t-shirt that said “Do you want my phone number?” This makes me feel like being someone who teaches the cultural implications of English is not only going to be interesting but philanthropic.

2) I have pretty much stopped caring entirely that French people think I’m fat.

3) Melatonin is a controlled substance in France, so it is a good thing I brought some with me, because I should probably be sleeping now.

A bientot!