la nuit des bonbons ?

October is a funny month to live in France. I tend to feel more nostalgic and homesick than usual. I guess it comes with the changing seasons to one of my favorite times of year. Or perhaps it's because around now I always buy my plane ticket to the states for Christmas, which fills me with a certain glee watching the countdown calendar ticker on my google chrome every day, thinking about home.

Even though the last time I celebrated Halloween to any extent was my last year of college when, at the last minute, I took some old red paint that we used several months before to paint our apartment, smeared it over an old striped shirt, tacked on a beret-like beanie and ta-da! I was a painter. Like most Halloween costumes, last-minute and completely half-assed.

if you understand Isaias' costume, you get a gold star.

It's not necessarily the fact of getting dressed up and going out and all of that jazz that I adore -- it's more the green turned to orange-yellow and that smell of crispy fall-ness that hangs around in the evening around this time of year. I enjoy it much more here in France than I ever did in Arizona or San Diego, mostly because you can actually SEE it. I think it also reminds me of my childhood in Massachusetts where we used big plastic bags of black and orange jack-o-lantern faces to fill up leaves that my parents raked into piles (after I had jumped into them, of course). I liked scooping sticky pumpkin seeds out to carve Nightmare Before Christmas faces and then watching a row of pumpkins flicker on the windowsill. Seeing the paper skeletons tacked onto our neighbor's doors wave in the wind and drawing witches and ghosts in school had a sort of comfort to it -- or maybe it has that warm glow now that it's been dug up from the depths of my memory.

freshman year, wrapped up in a sheet + leaves in my hair + gold belt = greek goddess. betcha never thought you see this picture again. 

junior year, it was disney characters. and... is that a christmas tree?

sophomore year, Grey's Anatomy was real popular. 

Despite the more obvious signs of autumn here in France, as you might imagine, Halloween in France is really not the same. I have yet to see a real pumpkin anywhere though there is the occasional window display with some orange leaves. No spiced apple cider, no pumpkin scones, no pumpkin patches or hay-rides, no glorious Target aisles covered in everything Halloween. Most people's attitudes here are kind of take-it-or-leave-it, but mostly leave it. I suppose you can't have it all. But on the bright side, 54 more days. That's good enough for me.

though it's hard to tell, I was wonderwoman this year, mask and all.

ça me *#$%!

In French, there seems to be an infinite amount of ways to express irritation and annoyance. Some are more vulgar than others--this is France--but I think it seems to be very telling about the culture. They are clearly an easily irritated people. Let me try to shoot some expressions off from the top of my head, just to give you a sense...

1. ça m'enerve 
2. ça m'embete
3. ça m'agasse
4. ça me saoule 
5. ça me gonfle
6. ça me gave
7. ça me gêne
8. ça me fait chier

Eight, that I can come up with right now. You'll notice that they are all some form of "it such-and-suchs me" like "it irritates me." As you move down the list, they become more and more colorful, like "it inflates me" or "it gets me drunk" (wtf right?) leading to my personal favorite--yes, it's so irritating that it makes me shit. Though if I stop to wonder why something that annoys you might necessarily lead to a bowel movement, I think it best not to dwell too long on the subject.

Maybe the reason that they have so many colorful ways of being annoyed is because they have so many reasons to be. If you've read any cluster of six words or more from one my blogs, you'll see that they are impatient, often rude, impossible to please and constantly arguing with each other. Dealing with each other, the amount of red tape, paperwork and taxes plus the unpredictable weather and all of that universal heath care the government is trying to force down our throats? They even want to help those making minimum wage pay their rent every month--like, c'mon! My apartment, my business! Not to mention all of the public holidays per year (nine, by my count), paid time off, two hour lunches, and mandatory maternity leave. Even the students have it rough, with a week off every two months or so. Don't even get me started on all that affordable and accessible public transportation they have everywhere--bus, metro AND tram? Living in France, I tell ya. It makes me shit.

mon copain(g)

Coucou, nerds.

So, I guess I have a man in my life. This fact, while awesome and spectacular and gooey-emotional-feeling words, seemed to have slipped my mind as something worthy of sharing. It seems boring and cliché to say that I was reluctant to present him via picasa albums and skype sessions to my life back home (i.e, all of you) because I wasn't sure how long it would last. Truthfully, I had met other French messieurs since being here, but all of them were kinda weird or losers-in-the-end and consequently fizzled out.

But this dood is pretty different -- I have to say, besides being stoked to have met someone so cool and easy-going, I'm shocked by how well we get one another. I don't necessarily mean that we literally understand each other, because trust me, the amount of dumb shit I've said in French has increased exponentially since the last time you and I discussed this subject (though my speaking and understanding is undeniably the best it's ever been). It's that, despite being from two pretty different worlds, we understand the other's way of being. My sister made an extremely enlightening point when, in asking me about him, her first question was, "so, is he down with burping?"

Yeah, I'm a gross person, whatever. In my special house of particularly loud belchers, I grew up thinking that there was nothing wrong with letting out the occasional burp with the appropriate people. And to be honest, I don't understand this hang-up -- of course there's always a time and a place, but I'll always remember the time I was eating lunch with two good (French) friends and I let out a small, appreciative burp. Their stunned, revolted reactions sum up exactly how the majority of French people handle the issue. So, the first time I finally let go and just burped in front of the copaing, his eyes lit up and he immediately high-fived me, feeling relieved that I wasn't one of "those" people.

He's a winner. Blogging suddenly feels really invasive now that I've shared something so concrete as a real living person in my life and followed up by posting a picture... Too much blogging, feeling really nerdy, stopping here.

See you around the interwebs.

xx

t'es qu'un con.

I hate grocery stores. With the exception of Trader Joe's, I loathe going. It seems I never choose the right time to go -- either I'll go in the morning when I'm not working and it's full of senile old cronies who like to elbow to the front of the line while muttering about young people and their loud music (seriously), or on an afternoon when there are not enough cashiers and everyone in the area has decided now would be the perfect time to stand in line for 25 minutes like an asshole.

Before coming to France, I considered having to wait more than 15 minutes at the grocery store check out to be about 14 more minutes than necessary. But now it seems that a 15 minute wait is more or less average.

This morning, due to a lack of work this week, I decided to wake up slowly, putter around the apartment for an hour or two before heading to the local supermarket which is one metro stop away. Though the metro service was stopped, I decided a 20 minute walk wouldn't be so bad (but I didn't count on it still being stopped when I finished because a 20 minute walk with lots of groceries is kinda unpleasant).

During my ritual standing around in the supermarket check-out this time, I was stood behind a middle aged guy who, I couldn't help but notice, was only buying cheap wine and beer. I looked down at my giant bag of chocolate pastries and thought, well... To each his own, amirite? He stood with his arms crossed, looking around, tapping his foot -- all signs pointing to: I need to buy this booze, people. I gots places to be, more important places than you!

As we stood waiting, he continued to sway on his heels, look at his watch and sigh a little too heavily. But, when it came to his turn... Well, how the tables do turn. After scanning all of his booze, the cashier glared up at him and asked for his supermarket card. The man, smiling now, puts his hand in his back pocket and pulls out a piece of gum wrapped in silver foil. He unfolds the gum carefully, taking his sweeeeeeeet motherfucking time, all the while smiling at this cashier who is glaring at him like:

He folds the gum into his mouth, crumples the gum wrapper and slides it into his pocket, now enjoying this moment a little too much. I look at the cashier and I can see her giving this guy a serious grimace. The man, meanwhile, digs into his pockets and brings out a keychain stacked with cards and keys out the wazoo, looking carefully for the blue and red Carrefour card, then handing it slowly over to the woman who swoops it out of his hand, scans it, and almost chucks it back at him.

"10.90 is your total, sir."

He looks at her, and pauses before digging back into his pocket for.... Wait for it... His checkbook and passport. At which point I'm like, oh boy. And he starts carefully making his check out while me and the other people in line are like:

Who writes checks at supermarkets anymore, you turd! I can see the guy behind me, both arms pushed against the carousel looking down and shaking his head. Oh boy, oh boy, shit's gettin' tense here.

When the grumpy cashier finishes putting the check in and out of the machine half a dozen times, I realize the man has done nothing during this time -- including bag his stuff (because in France, you bag your own shit, asshole!). He hikes up his pants, looks at me a little smugly, and then carefully smooths out his reusable bag to fill it up, forcing the cashier lady to wait to start to check out my items so as not to mix them up. At long last, he's finished and the woman says to him, "thank you, sir. goodbye." And the turd picks up his bag, says nothing and walks away.

In France, when you leave a store after having purchased something, you say "merci, au revoir." Always. No exceptions, because people will think you're asshole if you don't. Which is exactly what I suspect happened consequently.

But there's icing to this story! As I was walking out of the grocery store, I saw the turd again as I was about to go into the metro (which, as I was about to find out, was still not running) and he was coming out. He wasn't paying attention because there was a large group of people massing around the bus stop so he bumped into me pretty hard -- and me, instead of having a normal, reasonable reaction, which would have been to say, "hey, watch it!" I instead said, "ah, excusez-moi monsieur! Pardon!" Regretting it pretty much immediately.

I'll let you guess what he said to that.

Assholes.