Because after the week I have had, yeah, I need a shot. Or three.
Here's how it played out, and NO I am not exaggerating, and YES Paris is perfect, perfect, perfect. But just to get it all out of the way, Paris kicked my ass this week.
First off, week one of having my lover back in town with me was perfect, until we both got horrible colds. (thank you recycled airplane air, French germs like le Colde et le Sniffles). Once we got over our illnesses, we discovered that French brooms are like tiny push brooms and are USELESS AT SWEEPING and what is blue and in a spray bottle is NOT windex- and will leave your windows far streakier than the pigeons that collide endlessly into them.
Twice on trips "out and about" we discovered that there IS indeed an ugly part of Paris, and it exists outside the Metro line at Simplon. Don't go. We promise the rotting fish mixed with dirty water running down the sidewalk into the gutter is NOT "tres jolie ou tres French". It's just tres trashy. Speaking of trashy, want to know what they drink in the ghetto area of Paris? 40's of French biere? Nope. Box wine? Nah. But dirty plastic gasoline canisters of wine SOLD in grocery stores on the bottom shelf? Yep! No joke. Seriously, I couldn't think something this horrific up.
In this same week I survived(barely) an incredibly active bout of what I can only assume to be either food poisoning or le flu. How do you gracefully vomit up your small intestine repeatedly while your lover is 4 feet away in the next(the only) room? You don't. Essentially, as my darling so succinctly put it-the French have devised a way to squeeze a shower into an airplane bathroom, so imagine me cowering between a shower stall 18" x 18" and the pedestal sink while the water heater hovers a mere 3 feet above my head. Now imagine that we live in a studio and my dear one has nothing but the symphony playing out in the bathroom to accompany his slumber at 3am. Well, that and the constant horn blaring from the French drivers in the street below our window.
Side note: THIS I LOVE. I am, and will always be, 100% for blatant and ridiculous use of the car horn. It's flagrant, pointless, and wrathful-and usually initiated by either a man in a pressed suit, or a woman with three kids in the back seat. Completely effective not at speeding up traffic, but sorting out who the real assholes are in this world.
All said and done in a week, I found myself this evening eating a truly wonderful pizza with the man who holds my heart, while watching I Love You Man with French subtitles. This is how I found out that "my jet pack" in French is "mon reacteur dorsale". Told you. Paris is perfect.
