Blowing the budget

Oh no- I am going to be in so much trouble. I just got home from what was supposed to be a round of errands and ended up spending 350 euro on a pair of shoes, these ones to be exact (except in gray) at the American Retro shop on Francs Bourgeois. I love them, they are PERFECT. I had on skinny jeans today and so I tried on a few different pair and didn't like any of them. The other day, with wide jeans, I also couldn't find anything good. So when the shop girl said that they only had size 36 left, I had to try it on immediately. It didn't fit but the salesgirl said she could call the other shop in St Germain and they had a 37. Decision had to be made right then, to be murdered by B or just suck it up and have some great shoes to show for it. Being a bit of a daredevil, I waved my AmEx in the air and shouted 'Charge it!' I can go and pick them up on Sunday probably. Very excited but it does mean that the rest of any fall shopping will have to be postponed until I come up with some funds.

I am seriously thinking that I might have to combine my closet clear out with a bit of an Ebay garage sale. Kill two birds with one stone, right? I also went through Ella's winter stuff from last year and despite her 12 cm growth spurt over summer, lots of things from the sales look like they still fit. Which means that her cupboard is bursting at the seams once again, despite the fact that I just took out two sacks full of summer clothes. I am very very tempted to just start auctioning it all off. It always comes back to the same dilemma- do you take the thrifty route and keep the clothes and hope that you have another baby, same sex, same season, or do you take the more reasonable route and just get rid of it all (and make some money to pay for those 200 euro J Brand jeans)?

One of my more reasonable purchases today was a bottle of geranium syrup from that food shop, Izreal, on rue Francois Miron. I was looking for Lavendar syrup to make some lavendar cream cupcakes but they were out. While the shoplady was looking through all the bottles, I spotted the geranium flavor. She told me that she personally loves it in a glass of perrier over ice. I just had some and it is really fantastic, the most refreshing flavor and so original. But I have always had a bit of a weakness for scented geraniums, which I think is generally something reserved for the AARP set. I think that I might try making half of the cakes with geranium cream and a bit of apricot compote inside. For the other half, I just picked up a bag of lavendar flowers and will follow the recipe, which called for dried flowers anyways.

I am not totally sold on this cupcake shop idea but I think that even if I don't follow through with it in any serious way, its fun to do research like this, the only harm is to our waistlines. B has no willpower at all so the poor guy has been eating 4 or 5 cakes a day which totally sabotages all the dieting he did this summer. I've promised him that all future baking experiments will get taken straight to the park. I know plenty of pregnant women who would devour the entire box without a second thought.

Speaking of my friends from the park, we had such a lovely dinner last night. Someone mentioned a run-in that they had with the directrice of the garderie that we all use and it was pointed out that maybe this woman is rude to all of us because we are foreigners (although, for the record, I've never had any problem with this woman. I think its because she has a faiblesse for B and so I always try and send him in to deal with the problems.) Around the table there was a Swiss, a Dutch, another Swiss, a Tunisian/Senegalese, an Irish, and an American woman. The Spanish and Italian moms couldn't make it. I suspect that there are French moms at this garderie but off hand, I can't think of anyone who is actually French. I once read the blog of another foreigner in France who said that she wouldn't move from the 13th to the 4th because she wanted to expose her child to diversity. Its maybe not the kind of diversity she was thinking of, but its not a roomful of boring indenti-kids either.

The only downside to dinner last night was that I came home completely smashed. I swear, I SWEAR, I only had 4 small glasses of wine over the course of 3 hours, while drinking atleast that many glasses of water and eating a huge entree and plat. I think that I must have still had too many drugs in my system though (I took my last antibiotics and pain pills that morning) and that there was some kind of reaction. I sort of feel like it got worse after I got home because I was feeling fine if a bit buzzed then I got up from bed to go and get a bottle of water and I couldn't even walk in a straight line. I am horrified that maybe I was actually totally drunk at dinner but didn't realize it and made an ass of myself. Have not even had the courage to texto my main girlfriend to ask. Sometimes its better just to not know, you know? Anyways, its totally bizarre because I've usually got a pretty high tolerance for wine. I suddenly have newfound sympathy for this woman I used to work with. It was a small office and we were all invited to my boss's house for his 40th birthday party. The secretary in the office, who was kind of a weird little lady anyways, ended up becoming ridiculously, over-the-top, collapsing-in-a-heap-on-the-floor-giggling drunk. We propered her up on the sofa and gave her some water but she just seemed to get more and more silly and drunk. Finally, the boss had to literally carry her out to his car and drive her home because no taxi would take her. Everybody said it must have been a mix of some medicine she was on that did it, but secretly I've always thought how irresponsible and unprofessional of her. Now I know that you can be taken by surprise by these things. I should shoot good ole Marie-Chantal an email and apologize for being such a secret bitch, even if it was just in my head.