Whiplash

Seems like the world should just back off a bit and let me ease myself back into normality rather than waking me up on the first Monday after Me Week with a hysterical painter leaning on the door bell to be buzzed in. 45 minutes before he was scheduled to arrive. Arg. SO despite having spent an entire week having my body buffed and polished from head to toe, I ended up throwing on a pair of saggy jeans and my glasses, quickly pulling my hair into a pony, and rushing out the door with Ella so that B could talk to the painters' boss while I dropped her at school. Then when I got home, I had to bundle up Georgia and haul her off to garderie. I NEVER do morning drop-off and I NEVER EVER leave the house looking like I did this a.m. so it was rather embarrassing to bump into just about every single person I know in the neighborhood looking like shit. Well, it was nice looking good while it lasted...

I would love to type up a long description of my lovely birthday celebrations but the painter is using some sort of toxic chemical bomb in place of paint, I believe, and my eyes are actually burning right now. Good god, this can't be a normal paint smell? I know I am a bit out of the loop since we've only used Farrow and Ball in this apartment, which is low VOC and there is no smell at all. I don't know what I'm going to do with Georgia. She is due home from garderie in an hour and there is no way she can be in the house if it smells like this. Hopefully, since this paint is just the base coat on the cabinets, the smell will disappear at it dries. Its so cold out today, a nice long walk is out of the question.

I suppose I could always pop over to the Louvre and wheel her around for a few hours. I used to do that with Ella all the time in the winter when she was little. On Sunday, Bruno asked me what I wanted to do and I did propose a visit to the Louvre but since it was the first Sunday of the month, the line to get in was about 200 people long and he nixed that idea straight away. We ended up doing a bit of shopping and then getting a snack at the food court in the Carrousel du Louvre. When did they change all those restaurants?! I must have been there a year or so ago when I was still pregnant and it was the same as it had been for years but they've kicked out all the old stands and made it much more fancy. I like it but my fav thing about the place was that it was a fairly inexpensive place to grab lunch if you were touring around central Paris. I was always sending people there after a morning of museum-ing. I had forgotten to pack a treat for Georgia so while the rest of us had a hot drink, I needed a something for her. I ended up finding a little pot of applesauce at the French food stand (called Beauduvin. What does that even mean?!?) and it cost me 2.50 euro. People, there was not even a half a cup of compote in that cup. I don't know if I can extrapolate and assume that the entire food court is charging equally crazy prices but I'll definitely be thinking twice before sending friends there for a meal.

Oh- I do want to mention one funny thing that happened yesterday. I got Ella up and had her get dressed to go to Mass with me while B stayed home with Georgia, who was still napping. When we got outside, we were confronted with a hoard of sweaty people charging past our door. Apparently there was the Paris SemiMarathon yesterday. I hadn't heard a thing about it so we were taken a bit by surprise. Well, straight away, Ella started with the questions. "Where are all the peoples going, Mommy?" "Why do they want to go so fast?" "Why doesn't that guy have any pants on, Mommy? Isn't he cold?" "If I run to church, can I take my pants off? Ok-can I take my hat off?" "Why is that guy holding a flag? What does it say? What does that mean? But why does he hold the sign while he is running?" By the time we made it to the corner, I had depleted all my mental energy for the day. And after standing there for 5 minutes, I realized that there was no way that we could get across the street to go to church. The organizer manning the barricade said that he expected the road to be blocked for atleast another 30 minutes as there were over 27,000 people running that day! Oh well. I figured that we might as well go and get some bread and cheese for lunch, since the shops were atleast not blocked off. As we continued on our way, the questions kept coming, but the one that she asked me again and again was, "But mommy, why are they running???" I guess I didn't have a very good answer because finally she just gazed up the road as the hundreds of people sweated their way towards us and she sadly shook her head and sighed, "I just don't understand it."

Oh sweetie, I thought to myself, you are not the only one. And then we went off to buy ourselves a piece of cake.