The Script Ended

Fun with French Sports

When I lived in San Diego I read countless "moving to a foreign country" ex-pat adventures. I couldn't get enough of them. No matter how exasperating the ex-pat writer thought her experiences at the hands of the foreigners were, I thought they all sounded incredibly romantic or exciting.

Now I know better.

Last Wednesday I set off in my taxi for Roissy (Charles De Gaulle Airport for all you non-natives) for the short hop over to Frankfurt. I was attending a Finance conference in Vallendar which is near Koblenz----------I know, I had never heard of either of those places either.

I had checked my flight status before going to bed the night before and found out that it had been cancelled. Normally, I NEVER check my flight status. I am one of those blind faith in the system types- who is lazy too - and I hate to be bothered with my reservations once they have been made.

But - NOW I live with Monsieur Organization (opposites attract) and so am nagged into checking and rechecking such things.

Okay - I guess it was sort of a good idea -I got to find out my flight was cancelled, expend frustrated energy trying to connect to Air France "Help-Lines" - an oxymoron. No self respecting French company can be reached by phone after 10 pm - are you kidding? And go to bed fretting about it.

No real worries, the next morning I got rebooked.

I climbed into my taxi and there was already 15 euros on the meter. I am getting bolder with my French these days so I questioned the driver and argued with him all the way to the peripherique.

To no avail -  but I felt better. Besides - this kind of dispute is practically a national sport in France.

At the terminal my new flight was also cancelled.

Shit.

I traippsed over to the counter. The Air France people helpfully explained that the air control guys were staging  une gréve -a strike - and all the flights to Frankfurt were cancelled for the whole day. I don't know why they were picking on Frankfurt.

Strikes are ANOTHER French national sport. Thanks to this one I got to fly from Paris to Amsterdam, hang around there for a couple hours while the snow swirled out the windows and then get flown to Cologne where I got a train to Koblenz.

It is frickin COLD in Germany - and dark. Paris in winter may be famous for its grey skies but in comparison to the Rhine Valley - you need sunglasses.

No wonder Germans always seem sort of grim.

And no wonder everyone thinks I am deranged when they hear I am from San Diego - What are you doing HERE? When you could be THERE?

Sometimes I wonder.......

A proud Christmas Tree

We have a real Christmas tree. By real I mean that for the first year since we left our San Diego home and the subsequent exit of my husband from our family life, I have had a Charlie Brown tree in my Paris apartment.

Before Paris we always erected a giant tree picked out by a group effort and decorated it as if it was going to be in a magazine shoot - at least that was the goal.

Those decorations sit in a storage unit in San Diego. Paris has only known  2 footer's with some glitter thrown on.

A psychologist could probably do an easy analysis of what this all means and so could you so I won't go into it.

But this year is different. We bought a proud tree - probably over 6 feet and it has lights that twinkle and real decorations courtesy of My Frenchman.

It makes me happy - and it makes me cry too - for the family life I lost and for the family we are becoming.

At dinner with some of MFM's friends the other day I mentioned that I had four daughters and he corrected me - 5, he said - you have five daughters...........and 1 son.

Whoa.

6 kids around that tree.

Unglamorous me

Whoever reads my blog must be very patient with me. I don't post for ages and then when I do it sounds as if I am living this glamorous life traveling to exotic places and running around quaint French villages. All those parts are good but today was not.

It actually started with not being able to sleep last night - jet lag caught up with me. The sleeplessness was proceeded by an argument with my French man about where to put what furniture and what it all really MEANS in the big picture when we finally get to the moving in together stage (coming soon).

So I was in a fragile state when I arrived at my very French organization for a day of work.

Oh yeah...I forgot to mention the drunk guy on the morning train who insisted on sitting next to me when we were surrounded by empty seats, promptly leering in my face breathing out unintelligible French while pressing his leg against mine. Enough was enough when he lifted the armrest between us eliminating my last line of defense. I was out of there.

Settled in my new seat next to a sleeping and harmless looking girl I waited and waited and waited. This "express" train finally left just late enough to ensure that I would miss my next connection WHICH insured that I would miss my morning meeting WHICH would incur the wrath of our department assistant who is the de facto boss because everyone is afraid to make her mad.

When this assistant came to me later in the morning to tell me that I had yet again failed to fill out the required French gibberish form for some report I did not even know existed I ended up crying like a baby.

How professional of me! Yes, I was truly humiliated. Unfortunately for me, it did not end there. Before I could get a handle on myself, the Director of the department upstairs sailed into my office and came face to face with blubbering me.

He regretted it - but not more so than I.

I could have died. He hastily apologized and tried to back out the door - who knows what he thought my problem was.

And that was not all....I went for the perfect score when another colleague later came into my office and I (stupid me) thought she was coming to thank me for the great initiative I had shown by sending out a certain email promoting her event but...

nooooooooo

I had screwed up once again.

I had in fact stepped on her toes with this email and blah blah blah..you get the picture.

I basically could do nothing right while trying really hard to do everything right.

I should have stayed in bed. And yes, I cried in front of her too.

So much for my glamorous life.

Best friends

Speaking of New York. One of the cool things I got to squeeze in between meetings was a reunion of sorts with my 7th grade best friend. I am embarrassed to say that we are old enough to admit to not having seen each other for almost 40 years.

I spent hours at her house when we were 12 - dissecting our 7th grade dramas on top of her mother's bed. I don't remember why, but that is where we hung out. It was an intense friendship for me - of high importance in my life - the first real best friend that I can remember having.

The next year, in the 8th grade, we inextricably drifted apart.

39 years later we were two 51 year old girls hanging out again, dissecting the dramas of our middle aged lives - not on top of her mother's bed this time - but on the sofa of her New York apartment.

In a way, it is thanks to this blog that we reconnected. You see, as these things often go, she has had her share of major life changes. Her life has not gone exactly as she ordered it either. We have much in common when it comes to that. Thanks to the miracle of modern social media, she read my blog, we emailed, and basically picked up where we left off 39 years ago.

Do you think this would have happened if we were guys?

New York vs Paris

When I was a girl I used to dream of living in New York City. I fantasized about living in a high rise with a doorman and a view of Central Park. Frankly, I never dreamed that I would live in Paris instead - New York was enough of a stretch for me.

I just arrived back from 9 days working in New York with a quick trip to Boston thrown in. I have worked in New York before. Once when I was a new accountant at Peat Marwick I was sent to review loan files in a dreary New York bank office. Much more recently I attended several Collection showings for the clothing line I was selling. This time I was developing business, making contacts and shepherding a group of MBA students from one company presentation to the next.

I wonder what I will be the next time I work in New York?

I have to say one thing that is pretty obvious - New York is LOUD.  You would think that coming from the center of Paris I would be used to loud, but New York- style loud out-shouts Paris by a long shot. It also is expeeeeeeeeensive. For lunch one day I ordered a small bowl of risotto, a bread plate size portion of salad and a diet coke - actually 2 diet cokes - they charged for refills - for the bargain price of $37 including tax and tip. I am not kidding. Can you say rip off?

Makes Paris prices actually seem reasonable - which is a stretch. For once the painful exchange rate between the euro and the dollar worked in my favor - actually the company's favor - expense account you know.

I met a bunch of New York bankers - in spite of all the bad press - a really nice group of guys. At least they are nice while they are collecting their obscene bonuses.

With the price of lunch - no wonder.

Well my girlhood dream of living the New York city life morphed into my adulthood dream of Paris. Shows that all good things come to those who wait.

alps

In my previous life my husband and I deluded ourselves into thinking that we could afford to stay in luxurious hotels. Boy those were the days........thanks in large part to the all powerful credit card.

Those days are probably long gone for me, as well as lots of other formerly conspicuous consumers. Not such a bad thing really.

But today I am in the Swiss Alps thanks to my work and my duty to develop closer relationships to alumni of my employer. This thankless task has me in a Palace on Lake Geneva facing the Swiss Alps. Needless to say, it is stunning.

Tonight I will pull on my black lace dress and enter a room full of..........complete strangers.

Even me, the consummate extrovert, is a bit intimidated to say the least. Who should I be tonight? The mysterious lone woman in the corner?

Naw - not so good for networking. How about the gregarious American party girl?

Nope again, too old and too tired and too Frenchified for that one now.

I have been on the road all week meeting people I don't know over lunch, coffee, cocktails, and around boardroom tables from London to Geneva and each time I shook hands and sat down, the words sort of flowed out of my mouth. 

So nice to meet you, thank you for taking the time, tell me about your business, world, life path, opportunities, struggles..........
I guess this is doing business, right?

Incredible really, I have been living an out of body experience all week.  I mean, who is that girl (okay okay, I'm not a girl anymore), woman in the suit with the business cards?

I guess it is me. So off to the ball I go.

Wish me luck.

Strange Reflections

Isn't it amazing how fast one can get used to something? Start out doing something that you once would have thought not possible and BOOM - it soon is almost ho-hum, part of the daily routine.

Last week I was running for my train in Jouy-en-Josas, flying over the cobbled streets of this tiny village next to my new employer. I caught a glimpse of myself in the window of the boulangerie.

Is this really me? Coat tails flapping, trying not to trip on the round stones that pave the narrow lanes, what am I doing here anyway?

Not all that long ago I spent my days on suburban asphalt....in a car. Cell phone pasted to my ear, radio blaring, on my way to pick-up, drop-off or otherwise take care of kids, Costco, Target, Nordstrom.

Never and I mean NEVER would I have expected to fast forward a couple years and see myself reflected in that French boulangerie window.

And it is all so normal now. I am one of thousands of Parisian communters. I can push and shove with the best of them down the halls of the metro and train stations, permanently in a hurry. Versailles, yes THAT Versailles, is my daily stop, where I change trains to get to Jouy-en-Josas. Where, by the way, they invented toile de jouy, the lovely fabric design that decorators add for sophistication - I should know - I used to be one of those people........

................back in another life.

Diggs in New Jersey

Howard Johnson Motel, Highway 1, New Brunswick, New Jersey...........the Trucker's Rate. Does that say it all or what?

My clean little suburban San Diego sensibilities have definitely been left behind in the dust. I must say that having lived in France for over 3 years now has somehow prepared me for this experience over here on the other side of the tracks better than anything I ever lived Stateside. That is only because living in a foreign country increases one's tolerance for differences rather quickly.

My mission this week is to help install my oldest daughter into Rutgers University to begin her graduate studies. Neither one of us were prepared for our experience so far.

I know that it is not fair but I blame this on my divorce. I am sure that somehow things would be different if my husband had not become "monkified" and had stayed in his chair at our accounting office.

Instead Katie and I are staying within our new budgetary restrictions and eating white bread toast for breakfast this morning in Howard Johnson's lobby as a hysterical patron complained to the management that she was beaten up the previous night by 3 large dark hotel guests brandishing (not her word - too many syllables) guns and threatening to steal her money. All $246 of it to be exact - her complaints were quite specific.

This kind of stuff just doesn't happen at the  Hyatt.

Talk about feeling alien. We are definitely in a foreign country over here.

Just wait until I tell you about the housing choices we have seen from Craig's List - several of them make the HoJo look like a luxury spa.

Yup, that good.

The clutter gene

I was traumatized by growing up in a messy household. Between 6 kids, numerous dogs and 2 pack-rat depression era parents, little was thrown away or put away in my childhood home. Someone ringing the doorbell unexpectedly was cause for panic and the once a year dinner party that my parents hosted was preceded by an all out attack on the state of the house always accompanied by my mother hyperventilating that she would never finish before the guests arrived and my dad's temper tantrums over us kids inability to read his mind and do what he wanted us to do.

I vowed to never live like this once I was in charge. Not that my own household never saw out of control days, but they were never a permanent state and once we could afford it, I had regular cleaning help. In fact, my kids' favorite day was Friday when the cleaning ladies came and we all returned home to a sparkling house that smelled of lemon wax.

I am currently a house guest at the Portland abode of 3 of my daughters. They professed - and I believe them  -that they cleaned for days before my arrival. In fact, while 2 picked me up from the airport, the other was polishing the floor. But, I am afraid,the house has quickly returned to its natural state.

How can I describe this state? Suffice it to say that my parents would feel right at home.

I don't know if it is all the therapy I have been through or a new zen state of maturity on my part but somehow I have been able to relax and enjoy their company surrounded by empty beer bottles, old pizza boxes, shredded dog toys and other assorted dirty dishes, glasses and plain old trash.

Soon enough I will be rattling around in my newly empty Paris nest and frankly that thought makes this cluttered nest look like House Beautiful.

Sylvie

My first friendship with a Parisian woman began before I even moved to Paris. I had met a guy in a cafe when I was over here checking out schools and apartments and in our ensuing conversation (he was an American living in Paris) he had given me the email address of a woman whom he thought I would like. She and I exchanged some emails a few time before I got here and then we quickly met for a coffee when I arrived three years ago. We have been friends ever since.

Sylvie defies the stereotype of the Parisian sophisticate. She is highly intelligent - a Magistrate in the Parisian judicial system - but is as unassuming as you could imagine. Open and always ready to laugh, she sees the world as good.

No matter how depressed I can feel about this or that, when I am with her somehow all the good that is in my life shines through. Her attitude is such a gift.

There is lots to learn from such an attitude. I can't tell you how UN French an attitude like her's is! Most French people are "glass half empty" types. Even the happy ones. It is a national disease. They are soooo good at seeing what could go wrong and why something you want to try will definitely not work.

C'est pas possible, is probably the most common phrase in the French language. Even MFM, who tries to be so supportive, can see hurdles and blockages in an open field.

There really is something to that good ol' American can-do attitude.

I love living in Paris but I am so glad that I am an American. The sky isn't always falling on me like it is for so many of my French neighbors.

Except not on Sylvie.