Fin de partie

Well, well, well. Look who finally decided to grace the internet with her presence. I'm finally back in California, and for the moment, I'm really happy to be home. I'm not looking forward to unpacking, considering there's a whole mess of stuff I left from when we moved in, but at least I have a big comfy bed and consistent internet and my friends and family close by. And Cocoa Pebbles. Now all I need to do is write that pesky mémoire and my career as a student will officially be over.

Oh yeah, Spain was amazing. A country that sleeps in late, eats its way through the day and makes it to the finals in Eurocup? Yes, please! I would post pictures, but I didn't take too many, and none of them are that amazing. Just some nice memories of a wonderful trip.

Leaving Paris was kind of sad, although I didn't cry like I thought I would. The last couple of days were hectic, trying to get everything packed and saying goodbye to everyone... Gérald gave me a book of Duras which I probably won't have time to read until August, but it was nice of him. When he comes out here I'll have to pretend like I've read the whole thing.

I'm not going to do a conclusion post, because I think they're sappy, trite and pretty unnecessary. I know how I feel about the last year, and if you've been reading, I think you probably do, too. As for the blog, I don't know what I'm going to do with it. This summer I'm planning on doing this weight loss program that my mom's had a lot of success with (100 lbs. worth of success - seriously, it's crazy, you should see her), and I can't decide whether to blog it or not. There have been (and are) so many weight loss blogs, some turned into books, I just feel like there's nothing left to be said about it. But considering the nature of this program and the fact that it'll be my first real effort in the last couple of years to actually lose weight, it might be interesting. Anyways, let me know what you think, and if there's an interest, I'll do it. It'll give me something to do besides reluctantly writing my mémoire, and it might be un-boring, especially to all you skinny types who've never had to deal with any of this shit. You'll learn, and I'll get some free therapy out of it. It's a win-win situation all around.

For now I'm going to try to get over my jetlag. I've been waking up at 6 every morning and going to bed at 10, and it's starting to feel like senior year of high school again. (By the way, I just went through my senior yearbook and realized just how unpopular and awkward I was.) But I may be teaching this year, so maybe I should just keep with it. We'll see. Au revoir for the moment. Keep checking back to see if my life in Orange County is as (un)interesting as my life in Paris (hint: it won't be).

Unsolicited advice

I forgot to post this a few days ago when it happened, but I'd just like to draw your attention to two incidents that took place on Monday that I think sum up why part of me hates this country.

Incident #1. While waiting for the bus with a friend, a little old lady beckoned me closer so she could tell me something. I thought she was going to ask me when the bus was coming. The conversation went a little something like this:
Little Old Lady: You're very pretty.
Me (uneasy, thinking, aw crap, I know where this is going): Thanks.
Little Old Lady: But you have to lose weight! (called it) Do you know why? You have to lose weight for your health. I have a niece, she's fat too. But she has four children, and after she had them, she just let herself go. When I was young, I worked in a big apartment building, cleaning. I would go up and down the stairs, carrying big piles of linens, and I would be so busy, I would forget to eat! And when you eat, you have to eat the right foods, and not too much.
My friend, out of the corner of her mouth, in English: Do you want to move?
Little Old Lady, to my friend: Now, you should be listening to me, too. (Back to me) But really, you can't go through life fat, you need to eat right and work, and--

Then the bus came. Oh, man. I don't even know where to start. I don't know what's worse, the fact that she thinks it's acceptable to lecture a complete stranger on her weight - I know, she's an old lady, and old ladies can pretty much do whatever they want because, really, who's going to yell at an old lady? (I was this close, though. If the bus hadn't have come, I might have let loose.) - or the fact that she opened with the "you have such a pretty face" line. It's the second time it's happened to me here. The first was by - get this - a wino at the bus stop in the 17th with rotting teeth and permanently purple lips. I couldn't understand everything she was saying - something about rice, maybe? But the male wino sitting next to her told her to shut up, so I gave him 80 cents as a thank you on behalf of humanity and all those with even the least bit of social grace. Ladies, listen. If I want your opinion on something - anything, but especially on my weight (which, let's face it, is NEVER going to happen - I'm never going to go up to you, whom I've never met before in my life, and ask you, "excuse me, do you think I'm pretty? And what about this whole central region? What do you think of that? How would you suggest I get rid of it so men will like me and I can finally fulfill the dream of every sane woman of finding the perfect man who will love the newly-reduced me and give me beautiful babies and a house in the country so I can finally, once and for all, be a happy, well-rounded-but-not-actually-round, loved human being?), I will ask you. Don't just assume that because I'm fat I don't know how to fix it, or that I'm ignorant of my situation and need you to remind me once again of my rotund status, or that I'm not happy! Jesus Christ, lady. I am happy. Well, I was happy, right up until you had to go and piss on my day by telling me I had a pretty face. At least the senile woman on the first floor thinks I'm pretty - all of me. Probably so much so she'd chop me up and feed me to her cat, but still. She likes me just the way I am, so there.

Also, I call bullshit on anyone that "forgets" to eat. You don't forget to eat like you forget where you put your keys, or like you forget to run to the bank. It just doesn't happen like that, I'm sorry. Even I've been so busy that I made the conscious decision not to eat because I had too much shit to do and not enough time, despite the very noticeable growling coming from my stomach, but never in my life have I ever just forgotten to nourish myself. Bull. Shit.

Incident #2. After my friend's thesis defense, we went out for lunch at a café down the street. It was so nice outside, so we grabbed a table under an umbrella. Then the waiter proceeds to take away the umbrella, even though we strategically sat there so we wouldn't get skin cancer but could still enjoy the nice weather, without even asking us. Then - oh man - then he asks if he can move the tables over a little to give the people next to us more room. Fine with us, so he picks up the table with a carafe and two full glasses of water on it, and CRASH. Nothing breaks, but there is water all over our table, me, and my expensive leather bag. Does he apologize? No. He says something, then, ça arrive, but never do the words "sorry" or "excuse me" come out of his mouth. Then he yells at one of my friends for trying to go up to pay him, since he's taking forever to come back. Well, I'm glad we don't feel obligated to tip. And I'm glad that in two weeks I'll be back in a country where - even if it is artificial - people have the decency to at least be pleasant for the sake of not sending people into a rage over a spilled glass of water and a forcibly removed umbrella.

My mom gets in tonight, and we're leaving on Friday for about a week and a half (Madrid, Barcelona, Avignon), so I probably won't be posting until I get back. But expect some pretty pictures when I triumphantly return to the blogging universe. A bientôt!

I'd be Pun Girl and fight crime with witty wordplay... and alluring alliteration.

The countdown is at 17 days now. I never thought I'd say this, but I kind of can't wait to get home. I can't wait to spend time with my family and my friends (especially my best friend, whom I absolutely cannot go any longer without seeing), settle down into my comfy bed that doesn't hurt my back when I get out of it, wake up to the sounds of neighborhood kids riding their bikes down the street instead of sirens and scooters and, most importantly, never have to deal with guys grabbing my ass or whistling at me in the metro. Of course I'll miss the city, the mode de vie here, the bread, the fashion, the history, the art, the eye candy. Of course I'm not done forever. I'm just done for now. Yeah.

I've been looking at jobs for when I come home, and I've got to say, as much as you may think my degrees are worth, they're really not going to get me that far on my quest to be a contributing member of society. Considering I don't really want to do anything with French (sorry, parents) or art history (sorry, professor Felton), I'm going to have a pretty hard time getting my feet on the ground. I'm hoping to get into this writing program at NBC with a mock episode of The Office I'm writing with my friend (seriously, it's going to be one of the funniest episodes ever written), and I may do an episode of How I Met Your Mother and maybe Scrubs too. But that's not a job. It's a class two nights a week starting in September or October, and it's a really selective application process. I applied to be someone's assistant at a production company I interned at, but I'm not really that interested in being someone's bitch for however long it takes me to get where I want to be, wherever that is. I'm thinking of applying to be some writer/producer's assistant, but that's the same problem. Maybe I'll just go around begging for work. Or I'll just write some Katherine Heigl drivel that'll do well at the box office and sell my soul, which should give me enough to live off of for at least a year or so. Because, you know, I can just do that. Like that. (Please, you know whoever wrote 27 Dresses did that while working out and reading a romance novel. Come on.)

But the important part is that I'll be home in 17 days, and all this aspiring writer crap will be a lot easier to take care of from there (and also once I finish my mémoire, I'll be able to spend more time on the actual writing part, which is kind of important, or so I've heard). Man, I've come a long way from wanting to be a Spanish teacher.*

*A short list of all the things I've ever wanted to be in life, in chronological order: cartoonist (age 5), lawyer, doctor, Spanish teacher, architect, entertainment lawyer, talent agent, booking agent, art history professor, museum curator, French professor, producer, playwright, translator, superhero, Tina Fey.

Great minds think alike

Sentence from my Sex and the City review on SASSY, posted yesterday, but finished the day before: "And by us, I mean the cosmo-sipping, Manolo-coveting, sex-talking – or wannabe-sex-talking – fans."

Sentence from Joe Hottie's Dating Blog on Cosmo.com in a post about SATC, posted yesterday: "it's those Manolo-loving, Cosmo-drinking gals from Sex and the City who have female hearts around the country aflutter."

I'm just saying.

Also, I found out today that Gérald will be in LA in August for a week, so I'm happy that I'll have at least one interaction in French over the summer. Also also, the play is almost done, and he's sending it off next week for approval. I'm so excited!

That's pretty much all I have to say. I need to do some writing, not just my thesis, but some of my own writing, because things are bouncing around in my head and they take up so much room and sometimes they won't let me do anything else (like sleep, concentrate on other things, etc.) until I type them out. I want to have something completed by my birthday so I don't feel like a total slacker.

I'll be sorry later, I know

I realize this blog has become a lot less observational and lot more personal, and I guess I'm sorry for that? Sorry for indulging in my narcissistic tendencies to talk about the trivial events of my uninteresting life instead of making the same gross generalizations about French culture as people (including me) have been making in the last few years to try to get to the bottom of this whole cultural divide thing. I guess it's because I've spent so much time here, I've gotten used to things, or at least I don't notice as much as I used to anymore, or maybe I do, but it's not that interesting to me anymore, so I don't bother writing about it. Or maybe it's because I find the guy in the shady nightclub on a boat who flashed me the international sign for pussy while dancing three inches away from my face far more interesting than French women's ability to walk around all day in four-inch stilettos.

True story, by the way. The club was totally louche. I'm trying to bring that word into the American-English vernacular, in case you were wondering. It means something like sketchy, but also sleazy and shady. It's like an amalgam of the three - it gets the job done in a third of the time with twice the effect. I don't know how that proportion works, but just go with it. So anyways, this club. It was louche. Way louche. First of all, it's on a boat on the Seine, which is admittedly awesome, but then when you get inside and realize how hot and crowded it is, you start worrying that this is going to be the next "club disaster", like that fire a few years ago, and that tomorrow morning there will be stories about how this boat-club on the Seine sank in a fiery alcoholic blaze, leaving no drunken survivors. Thankfully, my nightmare was not realized. But I only spent an hour there, and then had to get out of the sweaty heap of twenty-year olds as I'd been elbowed one too many times in the back of the head by the couple having sex up against a pole behind me, and was ready to throw someone overboard. On the night bus home (i.e. back to a friend's place), the guy next to me fell asleep or passed out on my shoulder and my friend nearly fell out of her seat while sleeping. All in all, the night was somewhat of a failure.

Sunday night was the last pub quiz, and we won. Well, we tied, but we still got a bottle of shitty wine that no one drank. It's not the wine that matters, it's the glory. And oh, how sweet it is. I also got to meet a new Frenchie named Julien (it's fate, I tell you - or some really horrible joke the universe is playing on me), and re-meet another one I met once in September, whom I had a huge crush on but later found out was engaged. Ah well. Yesterday we played Mario Kart all afternoon and I finished a review of Sex and the City for SASSY, which is not my best work, but I tried my best. It's been a while since I've written a real review for anything, and I'm a little rusty. Plus, I loved the movie, but it was, in reality, not that great, so that was hard to negotiate.

You know that scene in Say Anything... where they're all at dinner, and the adults ask Lloyd what he wants to do for a living, and he says "I don't want to sell anything, buy anything, or process anything as a career. I don't want to sell anything bought or processed, or buy anything sold or processed, or process anything sold, bought, or processed, or repair anything sold, bought, or processed. You know, as a career, I don't want to do that." ? That's kind of my mantra right now. I know I've never had any interest in buying or selling ANYTHING, but that whole mindset kind of sums up how I feel about getting a job in the fall. So if you've got any tips on how to be independently wealthy, feel free to pass 'em along.

I'm going to try to be productive for a change. If not today, then tomorrow. And if not tomorrow, then definitely Thursday. If I haven't written ten pages by Friday, please chastise me harshly.