To__________, with love

To Monoprix, with love:

Thank you for keeping me fed, clean, and clothed all in one go. You may charge a little extra on those demaquillage linguets, but you're also the only place where I can find an umbrella, sidewalk chalk, a skillet, and shampoo. And thank you to your younger brother, Monop', for playing Abba when I'm buying snackies at 11h30.

To H & M, with love:

Admittedly I have very little success when I visit you. But thank you for providing pretty things to look at and cheap hair accessories.

To Le Loir Dans La Théière, with love:

One day I'm going to be your biggest fag hag, just you wait and see. And then I'm going to work with you and steal your meringue recipe and give people their carafes of water when they ask for them. How do you like dem pommes?

To La Favorite, with love :

Thank you for feeding my addictions every Monday afternoon at reasonable prices.

To Donatien Dalous, with love:

Thanks for paying for my coffee for a month.

To RATP, with love:

Remember that week where I successfully chased down bus 32 five times? In heels? If you ever try and pull a stunt like that again, you'll be sorry. But en tout cas, thank you for getting me from place to place, whether it be below or above ground. And usually on time, too.

To Adrien T., with love:

I never really wanted to meet your cats.

To Le Truskel, with love:

You did wonders for my self esteems. Wonders, I tell you.

To That Guy At Clairance Pains, with love:

You make the best curry chicken panini in the world. Also the fact that on se tutoie makes me really happy. I won't tell anyone about the time you were walking around the shop barefoot. Except that I just did. Oops.

Rachel and the case of the lymph node as big as a cat

I am impossibly boring. Or impossibly incapable of informing people of the details of my life. I'm not sure. I have been sick for a week and with each passing day become more and more incoherent. It works for me. I'm sure it's not working for others.

Things are winding down here. I don't want to talk about it. Since last writing I have accomplished the following:

1. Christina and I celebrated our Very Merry Unbirthday at Laduree which is 6 million + infinity times better than Angelina's. I had a religieuse à la rose, an experience comparable to eating the guest soap, but in the best possible way.

2. Gone to Barcelona. I was sick for most of this. I was attacked by a bird at Parc Guell. More specifically this bird attacked my sandwich, and I countered by inadvertently attacking the woman sitting behind me with the aforementioned sandwich. I also caught some lady en train de stealing my wallet. She backed off.

3. Saw Reese Witherspoon at Les Philosophes, which I know may sound like a lie, but it really happened.

4. Landed an internship in the curatorial department at the San Jose Museum of Art and got into Intro to Painting at Bennington. Both major feats.

5. Been proposed to by a Breton. I should have said yes, if only for the automatic French citizenship.

Also, here is my definitive answer about what I will miss most in Europe: the gummy egg

Sois jeune

It is a very funny thing, the sun. It emerges from its months and months of hibernation and in a very passive way demands that you drop everything and entirely rearrange your schedule to accomodate its reappearance. I myself have no will-power, and so it was very easy for me to comply with these new demands. This means more travelling, spending more afternoons and evenings on the banks of the Seine, eating more ice cream, gulping down more Badoit, and more fruitless searching for a free bathroom. It's a labor of love, really.



This past weekend I found myself in Amsterdam with Liz and Selenewhere, unbeknownst to me (or perhaps knownst at one point and then later forgotten), it was Queen's Day. From what I could see, this entailed a myriad orange balloons, complimentary Chupa Chups at dinner, and a carnival in the center of town. So bless your heart, Queen Juliana, because if it wasn't for you, Selene would not have enjoyed this delicious carnival bratwurst and the the three of us would not have had the pleasure of riding on this AWESOME FERRIS WHEEL.




Today being May 1st I had the sombre revelation that only 31 days remain until I leave my spiritual home (that's Paris, not Amsterdam). Where did all the time go? Have I really been sleeping in this God-Awful Ikea bed for a year? I don't know, and yes I have. I am very much settled in here and to leave would just be utterly impossible. And yet the date of my departure is fast approaching and I find myself making a mental list of all those things that must be accomplished before I leave. Most of them involve food- primarily: eating it. One more falafel from L'As, one last ice cream cone at Berthillon, one final rendez-vous at Le Loir with the ladies. But it's also time to hurry up and get to all the museums, landmarks, nooks, and crannies that I said, in September, I would eventually get to.

But the sun is out, and it's a very good thing, that.