one of these mornings i am going to witness a death...

i just know it.

she is probably 32, but she looks old for her age (from the neck up). her body is fantastic; long slender legs and shapely arms with just enough muscle and a teeny tiny waist. she dresses to accentuate this figure too, euh i guess you could say that... this morning it was an electric blue poor-man's hervé leger bandage dress with a bright red vinyl (poor-man's marni balloon) bag and black wedges from (and this is just a guess) bata.

her lipstick matched the bag and she even wore a matching red...wait for it...headband...

she might be crazy, at first i thought she was just a plucky, sporty frenchwoman eager to arrive at work on time, then last week she spit a mile as we sat at the stoplight and lately she's been laughing like a maniac and "revving up" (as much as one can "rev" a bicycle) at all of the lights. she jumps over lane dividers and swears at busses and taxis, she clangs her bell at everything in her path, pigeons, pedestrians, pieces of paper... i keep a safe distance between my bike and hers.

thankfully i stop just before the place de la concorde because i would really hate to see her work that circle...a place so dangerous that french car insurance won't even cover an accident there, where last year alone there were 41 accidents. she's gonna get squished...plucky, sporty, frenchwoman sandwich. i'll have to make a witness statement, be forty minutes late to work and probably have nightmares for the rest of my life and be forced to take the metro.

this morning i did something stupid. i knew it as soon as it happened...i glanced in her direction and (i couldn't help it) i giggled, like, out loud. and she blurted out some obscenity that i couldn't really hear because stevie wonder was too loud and she revved her bike and took off (and spit about a hundred meters later) now she wanted to compete with me. crap. suddenly a row of handsome bikers in matching grey suits fanned out next to me making a perfectly staged diagonal, more perfectly even than four actors could have made after a week of rehearsals. they laughed too, but she didn't hear them.

her wrath is now focused squarely on me. and i am either going to have to wear lower heels and bike faster or take another street to work in the morning...

to be continued...

the hangover that didn't happen

and am very grateful for that. (thank you aspirin).  

birthday dinner went off without a hitch (a long climb up rue de belleville but it made us hungry so that ended up being a bonus). the food was delicious, the wine was amazing, the boy was happy. all good things. drinks with friends at the express bar and a short ride home before 1am. all good things.

nespresso in the morning, a lovely chat with a smiley parisian woman at a stoplight who liked my rabbit fur jacket ("marché aux puces ou le marais?" "ben, le maris..." i admitted, guiltily. "but i didn't buy it, it was a gift"). singing and dancing alone in the office this morning, only to be caught by the gardien who was standing in the doorway with the mail...laughing. why is she so tan? two white chocolate cookies for breakfast. watching an old movie tonight at one of the tiny theatres on rue des écoles. all good things.

now...one very bad thing. i just read an article in the herald tribune (since my boss finished his paper during the hour and a half that he was stuck in the train because it ran over someone, okay- two bad things):

sarah palin is really starting to scare me...i have always had nightmares but they were improbable before (faking death in a helicopter crash so that the nazi soldiers wouldn't find me and i could escape into the jungle, strangling a baby, setting a haunted house on fire, sitting before a panel of french doctors and then having to pay sixty-nine euros because i didn't have health insurance, taking flight on my bicycle, chatting with monkeys in a café...just things that probably won't happen); but the pitbull hockey mom with a barely used passport and a degree in journalism who wasn't even popular in high school and who probably wants to make my kids pray in school who could be headed to the white house, that is beyond nightmarish. so i already mailed my ballot.  get those scary people out!!! it's almost halloween. i have enough scary things in my imagination, i don't need them in real life.

so tonight i will try to find a pumpkin to carve. another good thing...keep 'em comin' please.