Katie Doyle, Girl About Town

Wednesday, Nov. 15, 2006 - 1:45 a.m.

I have had 3 hours of sleep. I hate being wide awake after only 3 hours of sleep.

I went to Place de la Concorde last night to shoot sunset images. The sunset was a no go, but I think I got some really nice shots of the fountain going and the water all lit up. Apparently, at 6:15, the lights come on on the fountains themselves. :)

After that, I headed down the Champs-Elysees to shoot the Arch de Triomphe from down the avenue. Unfortunately, I tend to have the attention span of a guppy when I am walking down a Paris street, and I got sidetracked taking pictures of other stuff and totally forgot I'd headed that way for a reason, because I had to be at Elodie's for dinner at 8, and I didn't want to be late and worry her. But I was walking and saw a cool little Greek style building, and that had a fountain behind it with this tree that had all the leaves gold and was lit in a way that was gorgeous, and I wanted a picture of it, and then I walked around the little building, where there was some kind of very chi-chi expensive soiree going on, and that walk ended behind another building, so I walked around THAT building, and it turns out I was now on the street where the awesome glass-topped building is that you can see from l'Orangerie and Place Concorde. There was a guy walking up the sidewalk toward me, and I was all, "pardonnez-moi, monsieur; quelle est le batiment?" and I pointed at the big building I'd just walked around (that the little greek building was an out-building of), and he goes, "Le Petit Palais." So I point across the street at the glass-topped building, and I go, "Et le batiment la?" and he goes, "Le *Grand* Palais!" then grins kinda sheepishly at me and keeps going. Maybe you had to be there, but it was pretty funny. :)

So I took some images of those and what I think was Pont Alexander, but I need to look it up to be sure, because there are like 50 million bridges across the Seine, and they all have their own names, and then I took more pictures of the buildings and hoofed it to the Metro at Champs-Elysees/Clemenceau, where I took pictures of the Metro sign and then got on the train to head to Elodie's...completely forgetting that all I had to do was point my camera down the Champs to shoot the Arch, which was the goal of the whole thing to begin with. ::sigh::

Dinner was really yummy. Elodie made bo-bun, the Vietnamese dish with rice noodles, meat, lettuce, mint, and coriander/cilantro, with a little bit of onion broth sauce, and followed that with this insane fruit salad of litchi nuts, rambutan, and longan, with some lime juice. I had never even heard of rambutan and longan, but they are Asian fruits, both of which you'd never guess were edible or fruit. Well, actually rambutan looks like fruit, but it doesn't look like *edible* fruit. So hats off to those long-ago guys who were brave enough to eat one of each in the first place. Litchi nuts, for those of you who don't know, are not, I think actually nuts, they're fruit, and they taste kinda sweet & tart. (sweettart!) Those and the longans were the best. The rambutan took a little getting used to, because it has a sort of odd flavor, but it was good too.

Elodie and her boyfriend Arnaud were cool enough to give me a suitcase so that I wouldn't have to buy one to get my stuff home, now that the luggage rules are all different and inconveniencing, compared to when I left. It's one of those hugeass hard Samsonites from back in the day. Remember the commercial where they put a piece of Samsonite in a zoo cage with a 500 pound gorilla, and then the gorilla went all nuts and just battered the absolute hell out of the thing, tossing it into the bars and clobbering it with clubs and then jumping up and down on top of it, and through it all, it stayed closed and intact?

One of those. I am Old School, baby. Like seriously. The only problem with it is that, as Arnaud pointed out, it's heavy before you ever put anything into it. And it has no wheels. Since I'm checking it, that's not THAT huge a problem, and I actually really love the thing, but getting it from house to airport could prove problematic, and if MP weren't helping me, it would be a nightmare. The thing's going to weigh 50 or 60 pounds when I get done with it, and then on top of that, I have 25 pounds of electronic equipment and another full-sized backpack that will probably weigh another 40. That's a lot of stuff for one little me to manage. But it's a cool case, and I can't wait to buy a Paris sticker to slap on it. :) It's white, and I think it'll be cool to have it signed and slap a sticker on it every time I take it someplace. :) Now I just have to go buy a strap for it, to make sure it doesn't come open in transit, since you're not allowed to lock your baggage when you fly to the US...how f'd up is that? Anywhere else, they don't care, but the US, since it doesn't bother to actually x-ray the shit it puts onto planes, demands you leave your stuff unlocked so that some ham-fisted, hairy-knuckled baggage handler can paw through it. (bygones to all you luggage handlers out there, but really, I have not had good experiences with your kind, so I kinda hate all of you) It's really kind of amazing when you look at how other cultures live vs. the fear-based society/government we have. Even England allows you to lock your possessions to keep them safe when you travel. The US is so far as I can find, the only country that demands luggage be unlocked. And me, I may just say frell you, and lock my stuff anyway. I'm just worried I'll get my case back with the locks irreparably damaged, which is what happened to the kickass vintage Samsonite I *used* to have, the last time I was able to travel with it, in 1995. Kickass 1940s or 50s suitcase - the kind you see in old black and white movies, and in perfect condition - and some asshole took a screwdriver to it to open it up and go through it. He ended up basically ripping the entire lock-lever off of one side of the suitcase, and I was out one bitchin' valise...and half of the clothing that had been in it, since he then just pitched the thing out somewhere to tumble about, open, with all the other luggage in the airport. I literally got it and what was left of my clothing back 5 days after I landed, delivered to me piled into a cardboard box. That was the same flight that my other suitcase was returned to me literally blackened all over and looking like it had been attached to the baggage car with a rope and drug over the entire airport and behind a few airplanes before finally making it to DFW airport from Orange County...3 days before my 3 week stay was over. It was also the LAST time I ever flew American. Y tu mama, American. You guys can Blow Me.

Gee. Remembering that story, I remember exactly why I hate checking my luggage and am always convinced I will never see it or any of the stuff in it ever again. Over the years, my suitcases have been broken and broken into, blackened with soot and had the exterior virtually destroyed, been to Jamaica without me and finally caught up with me several days later, been opened up and had all of my underwear and some of my favorite t-shirts stolen, just been flat-out lost and never seen again, picked up off of the luggage carousel by some idiot who ignored the big, bright flourescent green "W" on both sides of my harvest gold case and left the airport with it for 2 days, been sent to Buffalo for a day while I myself was delivered to Ft. Worth, and once, disappeared to God knows where for a few weeks, only to reappear mysteriously on my front step to greet me when I got home from work one night in the pouring rain. The happiest day of my life was when they let you start carrying sizable bags onto the plane and sticking them into the overhead compartment, and I realized I would never again have to check a bag for a 1-2 week stay. The luggage gods just don't like me.

All of which boils down to I have a lot of angst about checking my bags to go home.

So dinner at Elodie's was yummy, if the conversation was a bit hard on me, as it was almost entirely conducted in French, and Arnaud was the only person who translated it for me. Elodie did a few times, but mostly she would just shake me off when I asked, once just flat out refusing, because she said it was somehow inappropriate. The other person there who could translate would do this incredibly bizarre thing where she would start a sentence to tell me what had been said to me (by her boyfriend), and then she would just stop. Like literally, she'd get 5 words out and then just stop. Stop speaking, stop looking at me, just stop. She'd turn her attention back to her boyfriend, and it was like I wasn't even there. The first 2 or 3 times she did it, I thought she was just trying to think of a word. Then I realized no, she was just finished speaking. So I got "sentences" like, "It means (gesturing vaguely at the floor for roughly 2.3 seconds)." (the word meant overhead, which Arnaud was kind enough to supply) "He feels that you are." "This painting is like a."

I'm not kidding.

Unfortunately, Arnaud was not always present, so there were vast chunks of conversation I have absolutely no clue about. The guy speaking started out speaking at a measured rate and was easy to understand, but I fell victim to the classic blunder of actually remarking on how easy it was to understand him, and he accellerated accordingly. Plus when he gets excited, which he does a lot, he really goes to town. So basically I sat there and understood a word here or there, but not enough to really follow anyone, and mostly just observing the looks on people's faces as they conversed. I thought it was hilarious, however, when after Arnaud told him I was doing a Pete book, the guy told me I prefer to live in the world of imagination in that manner because I did not get enough love as a child. Seriously; hilarious. I laughed and said c'est vrai. He wanted to know a lot more about the book, but Elodie thought it prudent to keep it to ourselves, so we did, which did not go over well, but he finally agreed to be patient and wait to see the website. I hope he wasn't offended; I've never seen anyone more adamant about knowing something in my life. Congress had nothing on this guy when it went after Bill Clinton over Monica Lewinsky.

So, I think that's it. It was a nice dinner party, even if I didn't understand all the conversation, and I like Elodie and Arnaud quite a bit. They're nice, generous people. And I love Elodie's illustrations. :)

I spent the last 4 days trying to reach my landlord, to make arrangements to get my deposit back. I told him several times my plane leaves Sunday morning and that I need to meet with him by Friday, so I can change my deposit back into dollars before I go. So he finally calls me at 10am this morning (hence, the 3 hours of sleep) and says he's going away for the weekend, from Friday to Sunday, so his mother will meet me here Sunday evening to return my deposit.

Do you see the problem? Because, you would be ahead of him, in that regard.

I'm like, uh, that will not work, seein' as my plane leaves that morning, and he actually says to me, well what time is your plane leaving? And I'm like, I have to be at the airport at 9am, and he's all, but what time does your plane leave?

Now, I don't know about you, but when I am leaving on an international flight, I don't dilly dally around with getting to the frigging airport. I don't cut that shit to the last minute. Getting on a plane is stressful enough without also having the freak-out of sitting in traffic, wondering if you're going to make it, fingers crossed as hard as they can be without dislocating a knuckle, barely breathing, and sweat pouring out from under your armpits while a migraine begins to systematically destroy your skull and brain. I am NOT about to sit in this apartment waiting for someone to show up who may or may not be late because they're not operating with the same sense of urgency I am the same morning I have to board an international flight. Not to mention the fact that every single time I contacted him, I told him I had to be able to change my deposit back to dollars before I go, which I would not have time or opportunity to do on Sunday. And now that I think about it, when I talked to him on the phone this morning, after 3 hours of sleep, I forgot to reiterate to him that I need that damn deposit back in cash, so I bet you anything the woman gives me a check.

So I say to him 11am, and I have to be at the airport at 9. Which is not, strictly speaking, true. The flight leaves at like 12:10. But I *do* have to be at the airport at 9, and I really didn't feel like having to put to fine a point on that and debating it with him. Not to mention that at this point, I am disinclined to acquiesce to any requests he might make. I'm too frustrated. So he says well then I must be leaving for the airport at 7am, and I say why yes, I believe I am, and he says well then we have a problem, and I'm like why, can't your mom come sooner, and he's all well what about the key, and I say dude, I will go stay with a friend, and happily, but Sunday is out of the question, and he says well, his mother can probably make it on Friday evening, and I say awesome, and he says he'll check, and he calls his mom. I lie in bed staring up at the ceiling 2.5 feet away and wonder what part of "I'm leaving Sunday morning and I need my deposit back before then" completely eluded his understanding, and deal with what seems to be the neverending frustration in my life of PEOPLE WHO DON'T FUCKING LISTEN TO ME. Like seriously, whoever came up with the concept of speaking softly whilst carrying a big stick is a guy who obviously had my problem, and I may very soon take to adopting his philosophy as my own, because goddamn it, I am sick to fucking death of repeating myself over and over again to people who don't fucking pay attention or think I don't mean it. I am right here and now adopting Zero Tolerance. I will say it fucking once. If you aren't listening or don't pay attention, that's your hard fucking luck, and if you negatively impact my ass with that shit, your own is kicked to the curb and out of my life. I just can't take it anymore, and I shouldn't have to. It comes down to respect, people. Fucking show me some, or we are through. I have wrath, and I used to wield it with impunity, and it wasn't pretty. I stopped doing that because it scared some people, but you know, when people were afraid of me, they listened. They called me arrogant, but they shut the fuck up and paid attention. I'm really sick of people not listening, so the wrath, she is back. And I don't fucking care if some people can't hack it. I am done with the lack of respect. I expect to get back what I put out there, and if you can't bother, then I can't be bothered with YOU.

Whew. That felt good. As digressions go, that was rather strident, and I'm sorry you had to see it, but damn, it felt good.

SO ANYWAY, he calls me back 5 minutes later and says his mom will be here at 7 on Friday. Excellent, I say. He says something about how he hopes he will get to see my picture (I don't know, have no idea, don't ask) and 7:00 Friday, Mom, and we hang up. Then I have to call MP and ask if it's okay if I crash on her couch for 2 nights, and because she rules, she says yes and that she'll see if she can come pick me up on Friday so that I don't have to struggle with my luggage on the Metro, and then I come down here and write an email to TB about the cluelessness of my landlord, and then I write you guys, and now since my day is shot to hell with cleaning, laundry, and packing, I think I will go back to bed for a few hours. Assuming I can get past the bizarre and unpleasant smells flooding my apartment at the moment from somewhere out there. In The Hall.

Peace out,
Katie

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