Classic.

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the crazy chanel lady

Having spent a very random Wednesday afternoon at a vintage Chanel auction, I thought I’d take a minute to share a bit of the fabulosity with you all. But first let me explain the wondrous creature pictured above. Walking through the doors of the Drouot Auction House, I was nearly mauled by her double-C logoed handbag as she pushed past me, running for the  escalator with her dog.

Every inch of her body was covered in something Chanel. I think she was somehow in charge of everything, which could explain the German camera crew trailing her. But they might have just as well been clamoring to get that outfit on film for posterity. Seriously, I so wish there was some kind of photo shop function to help you more fully experience the blinding blue disco glitter on her glasses. And the dog. The dog! It’s just too perfect for words.

Almost as perfect as the gorgeous things for sale:

All about the label

yes please

Drooooooooling

And yes please.

Now personally, I don’t see myself ever dropping loads of precious pastry-buying cash on a fancy suit (because if you added up how much I’ve spent at the bakery in 4 months, I’d probably be able to buy one). But that red coat almost had me convinced of the Gospel of Coco.

Just a humble servant of the people.

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The best umbrella. Ever.

Let my freshly Rosetta Stoned brain translate for you: SH*T! IT’S RAINING!  Yes, it’s been sputtering and drizzling and utterly downpouring for the past few days. And it’s making it terribly hard to motivate.

Seriously, it’s nearly 1pm 2pm in Paris, Brad Pitt is out there roaming the streets somewhere and I can’t even muster the will to brush my teeth.

I know, I know, get up and get a freaking umbrella! Well, I totally would, but there are other mitigating factors at stake here:

1. I left the best umbrella ever created, pictured above, on the metro. (I guess I should have asked the Lost and Found if they had it)

2. The force of Kell on Earth on demand is a strong one. I cannot be expected to fight it alone.

I feel guilty for frittering away my precious time and opportunities here with crap american TV streaming on the computer. I berate myself with questions like, why am I sitting here wasting a day in Paris? Why have I left my hair unbrushed for two days? Why am I eating a fried egg on french bread for lunch?

Well, because I can.

Thank you to my friend Gina who totally rocked my world with that revelation. As a mostly unemployed young woman living an untethered life in the most beautiful city in the world, it is my duty to be all that most of the world can’t be. It is my responsibility to drink wine in the afternoons, read all day and scoff at things like daily showering. Why? Because a lot of other people can’t.

See, I’m doing all of this lazing around for YOU. With every post, rest assured that I am sacrificing things like personal dignity and ambition for the sake of those of us who have to live serious, responsibility-laden lives. I know this is only a fleeting opportunity, so I solemnly vow to fill my days with nothing but unserious pursuits big and small. That said, I’m off to pop some champagne, paint my toenails and study french by watching Cuisine TV.

You’re welcome.

Lost and found.

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Some of you might recall the crime wave that hit (me specifically) back in January. During that hellish week a 4 foot tall pickpocket absconded with my wallet, used my bank card to purchase metro tickets and was never to be seen again.

Or so I thought. I had long ago cancelled all of my credit cards and ordered a new driver’s license when an interesting letter appeared in the mail. It was from the Prefecture de Police. It made me slightly nervous, since, you know, I had that little misunderstanding at Sephora. But alas, it wasn’t a warrant for my arrest (which probably would have made for a much more interesting blog post). No, it was a letter saying that the police had found my wallet.

Glory be! My fabulous yellow patent leather portfeuille was in safe hands once again! And for the low low price of 10 euros. I could get it back. Needless to say, I high-tailed it over to the police station, practicing my vocabulary on the way. I wasn’t sure who I’d be talking to, or what I’d have to explain. I assumed it wasn’t every day that someone got their wallet back from a thieving gypsy child.

I arrived at what might be the most well-organized operation in France. It was a room similar to the DMV, with a woman handing you a ticket as you entered. When my number was called, I went to the window, handed over my letter and ID, and waited for my item to be retrieved. They were pumping people through the lines with a speed and efficiency I have yet to experience anywhere in the vicinity of Paris. They must have to deal with a lot of stolen stuff.

Indeed, while waiting, at least 5 other people recouped their wallets. One man got back a basketball. Another beamed as he inexplicably collected a plastic bag of what looked like pistachios. This made me giggle but also feel slightly incensed at the brazen tactics of Paris pickpockets. Pilfering a man’s snackfood? HAVE YOU NO DECENCY?

It was then I realized that some of these items weren’t stolen – simply lost. Left on the metro. Dropped on the bus. Et cetera. I started to wonder if maybe that petit pickpocket was a figment of my imagination. Is it possible that I simply lost my wallet in the street somewhere? Left it on the counter at the boulangerie?

Nah. I’ll stick with my original story. I’ll need the street cred for when Sephora finally decides to pursue those shoplifting charges.

Paris, Je t’aime.

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Love is in the air
Image from redbubble.com

Last night I was hopelessly, madly in love with this city. Blame it on the wine, blame it on the exquisite specimen of a husband sitting next to me, blame it on the heady fumes of escargot-duck-tarte tatin trailing us from dinner. But last night as our taxi whizzed through the grand streets of Paris, the Seine and Eiffel and all the gorgeous old imposing buildings lit up like some fairy-tale movie set, I couldn’t help but stare out the window with love-sick googley eyes. As if on cue with every turn, a symphony soared forth from the radio and my heart soared ahead right with it. If I could have found the will to roll down the windows I would have shouted at the top of my lungs “DEAR GOD I LOVE THIS PLACE!”

But instead we sat spellbound. Only when we slowed to a halt in front of our building could Husband muster a few dreamy words to our cabbie. “J’adore votre musique monsieur.” “Mais oui, c’est Brahms!” he replied. Of course, it’s Brahms! With goofy smiles plastered to our faces we meandered our way inside and fell asleep, punch-drunk from our cab ride tryst with the City of Lights.

Then today we went to the Louvre. With, oh, about 1 million of our best tourist friends from around the globe and I’m sure several hundred lurking pick-pockets just for kicks. We couldn’t even bear the line to get in. Annoyance boiled in my veins. All I could hear was the sad trombone music playing in my head. I was done with this place.

Ah, the heart is a fickle thing indeed.

Hi! Will you be my friend?

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You can see the crazy in my eyes.

One of the most exciting parts of moving to a brand new city is meeting brand new people. I know this because I was reminded, oh, about 8 million times by anyone and everyone who found out I was moving to Paris. “Think of how many interesting people you’re going meet!” they would say. “You’re going to make so many wonderful friends!” they’d opine.

My reasonably outgoing self would be in total agreement. But my curmudgeonly 7 year-old alter-ego immediately wanted to respond to these hopeful thoughts with a sharp “I HAVE friends thankyouverymuch, and I don’t want any stupid new ones.” Call me loyal, call me stubborn, call me absolutely terrified about moving to a big lonely foreign city – but I started to tell myself that making new friends was going to be scary! And hard! Waaaaaaah!

That’s usually when the voice of reason would try to intervene.

“Jen, this is reason speaking.”

“Um, what?”

“You know, reason. The voice of sanity. I’m here to keep you from humiliating yourself and alienating all possible friendly companions?”

“Hmm. Never heard of yah.”

So I set forward promoting a staunch isolationist stance. And very quickly learned it was not going to do me very good. Two weeks in, with no internet and limited human contact during the day, I was starting to go just a wee bit nuts. Talking to strangers and sometimes the walls nuts. I found myself cozying up next to anyone on the metro who seemed to be speaking English. I considered more than once just asking the nice lady at the fromagerie if she wanted to hang out later.

I was desperate for a friend. It didn’t even have to be a particularly good one. I’d take a back-stabbing, husband-stealing, trash-talking one if she would just get a cup of tea with me some afternoon.

Worried about the new imaginary friends I liked to call “croissants” and “champagne,” my loved ones back home flooded my inbox with their foreign contacts, and I started doing the unthinkable: asking total strangers out on blind dates. So you know my sister’s husband’s co-worker’s uncle? AND you have a pulse?! Let’s get dinner. Now.

And most surprisingly, total strangers started calling me. Asking me over for tea. Suggesting we meet up for some shopping. You know, generally being incredibly warm and welcoming human beings. And wonder of wonders, I think I actually might be real friends with some of them now.

I’d like to think it’s my charming personality that invited so much friendliness, but I know it’s more likely that these wonderful people are familiar with the wild-eyed, Will-You-Be-My-Friend panic that hits expats and new kids alike. But instead of closing off from the world in a fit of misguided self-preservation, they stepped forward with an open heart.

Huh. Who’da thought that would work?

Lay off me I’M STARVING.

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Last night I ate an entire baguette for dinner. With the most delicious french butter I have ever tasted. And a chocolate chip cookie for dessert.

Ok, ok. I also ate some peas, just to get a little green in there. But mostly it was a boulangerie-sponsored repast. And today all I can think about is how soon I can get some steak frites IN TO MAH BELLAH!

Now anyone that’s met my junk-in-the-trunk knows that this might be cause for concern. At least State-side I was running and yoga-ing and gym-ing it up to help tame the J-Lo booty. Here, not so much. So this is where we should all be getting very, very worried about the size of my arse. But have no fear people, I am walking it out!

You see, when you have to walk at least 6 long blocks to get any kind of sustenance, formal exercise and baguette dinners become irrelevant. Take that 6 long blocks pulling a granny cart filled with gallons of milk and jars of pasta sauce, then haul that cart up 2 flights of stairs, and you’ve just elevated your daily commute to Iron-Man training status. And that’s only one of the 2-3 grocery shopping trips I take every week.

Almost everything we purchase has to be lugged home on foot. Husband and I carried our new 42-inch TV 10 blocks because we don’t have a car and didn’t want to pay for delivery.

Then there are days like today, when I walked 10 minutes to the metro, high-stepped it up the escalator, sprinted down one corridor to make the train, only to realize I left my embassy badge at home. Then walked all the way back, took a quick breather, and started out for set number 2.

So rest easy. I think my bum and I are going to be just fine. Now excuse me – there’s a pain au chocolat calling my name.

No diamonds, but plenty of diplomats. And pantsuits!

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Rocking the pantsuit.I’ve been reading Letitia Baldridge’s memoir, Of Diamonds and Diplomats, and I think it may be skewing my expectations a bit. If you don’t know Ms. Baldrige, let me fill you in: After WWII, fresh out of college, she landed a gig as the Social Secretary for the Paris embassy, then spent a few years as a personal assistant to the ambassador in Rome, then moved on as Social Secretary to the Kennedys. Oh, and somewhere in there she served as the first female executive at Tiffany’s.

Clearly this woman knows what’s up when it comes to official functions. In her day, black tie receptions were a regular occurrence. Things like seating ranks and flower arrangements were issues of the utmost diplomatic importance. Ladies got dressed up for work and for dinner.

Dinner! In a BALL GOWN. I started thinking I could really get on board with this whole diplomacy thing: spreading good will to foreign nations with every coupe de champagne! Breaking down international barriers over caviar! Representing America with a great pair of shoes!

So when I got the email invite to see Hillary Clinton speak at the Ambassador’s residence, I felt compelled to rise to the occasion. This was somewhat uncharted territory, since most days I never leave my pajamas and I don’t own a power pantsuit. But I donned a sleek wool sheath dress and my best heels and set out to be diplomatically fabulous.

US Ambassador's bad ass house

Hillary would be arriving at 4:30, so I got there right as the doors opened at 2:30, figuring I could grab a seat up front and wait. Because if you walked up to a palatial looking house, expecting to wait at least 2 hours to hear a major leader of the free world address the diplomatic community, wouldn’t you at least expect there to be a few chairs around?

Nope. Not a one. And since they took my umbrella at the gate, I arrived damp and wearied to a big empty room where I stood in my best heels for what seemed like eternity. I felt a tad overdressed. I waited in vain for someone to start serving champagne. I wondered how the hell we could get Ms. Baldrige back in charge of events.

Because believe me, it was still really amazing to see Hillary. She gave a great talk, thanking everyone for their service graciously. But by then I was so delirious from all the standing and jostling and lack of cocktails that I could barely hear her over the pain in my feet. Where was the luster? The glamour? All that really important social protocol!?

As I hobbled out to the street to the bus stop (I bet Letitia never took the bus), I bumped into a friend and asked her how her feet were doing. “Oh that was nothing. Last summer I waited for 3 hours to see Obama. In the rain. No umbrellas allowed.”

Well. Looks like this rookie will be trading in her heels for sneakers and a poncho. And trading in Letitia’s book for this one.

Brassiere or brasserie?

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Haute Couture Fashion Week is wrapping up here in Paris and I haven’t seen a single starlet traipsing around in high fashion. But I did find myself at the Salon International de Lingerie, where I saw many women (and one man) walking around in their underwear.

This annual convention of undergarments is primarily geared towards industry folks looking for the latest in spandex and lace. I snagged a seat for the fashion show, and set to work pretending it was Bryant Park, with more skin.

Now, it seems to me that the French must take their lingerie very seriously. I was with a group of older women who could not stop oohing and ahhing over every balconnet bra and garter set that came down the catwalk. I was the only one that giggled when a pregnant model strutted her stuff in a line of racy nursing bras called Hot Milk. I started to suspect that everyone around me was most definitely wearing a pair of silky knickers that actually matched their bra.

It made me feel a little insecure about my own comparably grannyish underpinnings (imagine that! A bunch of french models in thongs made me feel super lame!). And the US/French size conversion doesn’t help matters much – let’s just say there are A LOT more centimeters than inches.

But still, I feel compelled to step up my game. So I’m going to visit some lingerie shops. I’m going to try on some fancy french underoos. I am most definitely going to make a complete arse out of myself with the french salesladies. And of course I’ll let you know how it goes. What are friends for after all!

I just can’t work under these conditions.

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It’s a little known fact that Julia Child and I are long lost soulmates. She liked food, and hey, I like food! She moved to Paris as a newlywed, and look at that, so did I! I am practically re-living her life, just a foot shorter and fifty years later. Plus I watch A LOT of Food Network.

So obviously I arrived in Paris ready to cook. I planned to learn from the masters at the Cordon Bleu. I dreamed of roaming the open markets. I vowed to sample cheeses and wines and cuts of meat that you could only find in France. I’d spend every day singing in the kitchen, whipping together rich creamy sauces and all kinds of buttery goodness.

But here’s what really happened: I set one pan of brownies on fire, made one inedible attempt at escargot and nearly smoked us out the the apartment on Thanksgiving. I bought cheese that smelled like a dead animal and boxes of rice with instructions like: “add some water and boil for a while.” Out of sheer desperate hunger I’ve made spaghetti (with sauce from a jar) approximately 30 times in two months.

Now some of that we could blame on jet lag, getting settled in a new country, learning the metric system and such. But I’m going to go ahead and blame it all on my godforsaken oven. First of all, it’s small (see above). Really small. Like my new Staub cocotte will not even consider going in there small.

But the part that fills me with inconsolable rage every time I have to boil a pot of water is the pictograms. That’s right, in addition to computing advanced Celsius/Fahrenheit conversions while following cooking directions in a foreign language, I have to decipher what the hell this knob means:

WTF

Because why would they give me a simple mechanism for choosing the oven temperature when they could provide 10 cute little pictures of ambiguous food-like objects! Oh, would you like to make a hollow muffin? How about a steak with lightning bolts shooting at it? Or a bird on a spear? No? Ok, then what about a pizza/pie/other disk-shaped food item?

Seriously. The pictogram oven is apparently fairly common in France, and I’m beginning to think it’s a genius government ploy to bolster the local economy by forcing people to eat out more often.

I’ve tried oven thermometers, I’ve asked everyone I know here how it works, I’ve even tried to steal a user-manual for a similar model from the French Home Depot. But I’ve found that when my oven is really testing my patience, it’s best just to slow down, take a deep breath and refer back to that time-tested mantra, “WWJD?”

She wouldn’t freak out or cry or bash the oven door in with a sledgehammer. She’d pour another drink and laugh it off. And maybe make a quick reservation for 2 at the bistro down the street.

Say cheese.

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When left to my own devices, this is what’s for dinner:

Yes please.
Cheese please.

The creamy looking white one on the right is some fresh chevre that is out of this world. And also quite stinky. That big hunk of orange is something that tastes kind of like cheddar, but better. The multi-grain crackers are there to make you think I’m not just eating hunks of sweet, delicious, unpasteurized cheese by the handful. (Suckers.)