April in Paris

Bon jour, mes amis.

I am on a long planned, long awaited trip to Paris with my husband, and my nieces Molly (who is 12) and Caroline (who is 11).

We are renting an apartment near the Champs de Mars, with a view of the Eiffel Tower from the living room. As of this writing, I've only seen the place online, but oo-la-la. C'est magnifique - or so it seems on the Internet. Sure, I know that, on the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog. Or a chien. But this apartment does seem very nice. Plus the guy who owns it only advertises in Ivy alumni mags, and I'm pretty sure that if you screw over one of the 10,000 men of Harvard, or a Princetonian (you know, that "prince" isn't in the name for nothing), you don't get to advertise there for long.

Just the thought of Paris makes me want to don a beret, light up a Gitane, and start doing an Apache dance with a dark and dangerous swain in a striped tee-shirt. (Actually, if we're Apache dancing, I guess the swain gets to wear the beret.)

Just the thought of Paris makes me wish I knew more French than the memorized 'ou est la bibliotheque' ALM dialogues that are still running around my head, 40+ years after I learned them. But thanks to that high school French, my French is sufficient to limp around and make myself primitively understood, relying, quite crudely, on one tense and frequent lapses into the English word for whatever it is. 

I do retain full, multi-tense fluency if my part of the conversation comes from one of those long ago memorization sessions. Thus, if we have a flat tire, broken leg, or malfunctioning record player, I'm all set. Ditto (ditteau?) if I leave my glasses at the opera, or need to get in a discussion about the inevitability of hot dogs for lunch on Wednesday.

Unfortunately, while I can generally make myself understood, I can seldom understand more than every other word of what is rattled back at me. Quel dommage!

Anyway, I truly love Paris, and am looking forward to introducing it to the girls.

There's supposed to be broadband access in the apartment.

If so, I hope to get a post Parisian off each day.

If not, Pink Slip should be back on Friday, April 24th.

Unless I decide to stay to hell with it and stay, 'netless or not. (Note to my sister Trish and brother Rich: I will make sure you get your daughters back.)

Until then, à bientôt.