29. Teenagers: The Squirrely Menace

There're two teenage boys sitting next to me in Villa Borghese, my usual writing haunt while the laundry goes round and round. The presence of these two lads is fortuitous, because otherwise I'd be at a bit of a loss as to what I'd write about this week. But their attitudes and their behavior, while not dangerous in and of themselves, put me in mind of a topic that Megan and I were talking about earlier this week and has come up from time to time before: teenagers, and how they're terrifying, and how that means we're old.

28. La Tour Eiffel est trop grande

I've seen it the whole time we've been here, out our window and across the city. The Eiffel Tower. We've been here for seven months, and we're only going to be here another two, and I just need to gird my man-parts and go up in that thing. Thousands, nay, millions of people do it every year, and hardly anyone gets overcome by the urge to jump or sucked off a railing by a rogue cyclone or flung over the side by psychopathic people-off-tower flingers. It should be safe,right?

Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair...

Come, let me tell you about the day I went up in the Eiffel Tower. Well, I should say tried to go up, because...oh, just read on.

27. Printemps a Paris

It's springtime in Paris, my lovelies. The sun is shining, the air is warm, flowers are all blooming and stuff...and all of this together combines to act as some sort of magnet on Parisians. From the homes and salles de cafe (cafe interiors) where they've been holed up all winter, this perfect anti-storm of pleasantness sucks them right out into the open, into the parks and out onto les terrasses to sit in the sun. And although there are holdouts, most of them leave their big coats and scarves (their scarves!) behind.

This may look like a patch of grass, but it's actually human-sized fly paper.

26. A Triptych of Absence and Love

We did some more house-sitting this weekend past. A college buddy has a friend named Sid whose family has been in Paris for the last couple years, and she introduced us via ye olde interwebbes. They were heading off to Venice for a few days and needed someone to take care of their place. We were happy to do so, not so much because of their awesome apartment with its spacious kitchen and lavish living room and comfy bed, but because they have KITTIES! Two super cute cats that took right to us. Cuddly love sponges that think a good way to spend your day is to pet them. The whole day.

But that's not what I'm going to talk about this go-round. You don't want to hear about someone else's apartment two blog posts in a row, do you? No, today I'm going to tell three stories that circle a single theme, sort of like the end of Return of the Jedi's Death Star space battle/Endor bunker battle (with ewoks! Pbbt)/ lightsaber duel triple punch. Each of those scenes has a David/Goliath sort of Good vs. Evil thing tying them together (Lucas doesn't really play around with grey areas). My theme will be love, however, and to illustrate it I shall be telling stories about my grandparents, Data (from Star Trek: The Next Generation), and what happened after the end of our house-sitting stint.

Practice your awww face, ladies and gents.

I couldn't decide on cats or Star Wars for the "cover" picture, so you get both.

25. Chez Nails

We have a friend named Nails. I've mentioned her before, most recently in The Agening. She's Canadian by way of Iceland, a bit of a globe-trotter, roaming the world massaging sore muscles and teaching yoga with brief forays into restaurant...running? I think. She's kind of a Jane-of- all-New-Age-trades. Hmm. That moniker-- New Age-- is problematic, and I think Nails would be one of the first to point it out. For what she's into, her raison d'etre, as it were, is to bring people more in touch with themselves and the capability of wellness that is actually more what she would call Lost Knowledge than New Age.

24. Substitute French Teacher

Hi folks. As I may have hinted, implied, or just outright said before, none of our friends here, the people we hang out with regularly, are French. So we count amongst our friends in this country people hailing from Canada, the US, Israel...well, that's mostly it. But one of the things that comes up in conversation is stereotypes about people from other countries. What are the stereotypes of Israelis? Americans? The French? Israelis are super patriotic, tough, and funny. Americans are fat and stupid. And the French are snooty and hard to make friends with. Being stereotypes, it's possible to point at numerous examples of this being true, of course; the important thing to remember is that those are stereotypes, and not genotypes, of those people, to inaccurately use a term that fits lyrically.

If only I could have made Ted Nugent fat and given him
two extra arms to hold a cheeseburger and a bible... 

23. Why Nat isn't writing enough

This entry isn't about France. It's about me. 

One of my friends here asked me what I was doing with my writing. Was I just writing my blog, or tapping out a deep, serious novel at the same time? I told him that for the most part I was just working on my blog. I have intentions to write stories, and from time to time I'll whip out a sonnet because I find the form easy to work with and inspiration for one comes along with some frequency. But the fiction writing hasn't materialized as much as I would want.