[insert name here]

Two notable things recently:

1. I've been typing enough on a French keyboard that being on an American one screws me up.

2. My sister and I discovered an incredibly cool used book store in Auvers sur Oise.

Once I figure out what it's called (the bookstore, not an inability to type correctly), I'll edit the title of the post. The store is owned by a man from Quebec and spans a previously abandoned/boarded up building on the train tracks and three old train cars. It had an impressive coverage of subjects and vintages. While perusing through the poetry section, I found a book that had an old (unused) postcard saying, roughly translated, while you are reading this words, please suck on a cherry. Perhaps that's some French saying, but it definitely raised my right (and then left, and then both) eyebrow. I got some gems - an old feminist text in French about birth control among others - and we gave the guy who owned it the gears.

Paris!

Several days and one horrendous delayed flight after I left my apartment, I stepped foot on mainland European ground. I felt the understandable urge to kiss both the solid earth and my sister - but not necessarily in that order. Aside from thinking I was going to die on the rocky-would-be-an-understatement flight, I was happy to spend time with N & her daughter, perhaps the most gorgeous child to wobble the earth on this side of the pond. Get ready for some extreme baby cuteness. And don't say I didn't warn you.


It should be illegal. Today we went on an adventure to Paris, ostensibly to find some shoes and return some baby food that came with bugs in it. Yikes. And my sister wanted to exchange it - brave woman. In the end, I didn't feel like buying shoes but I did go in this crazy fabric store with my sister - the mannequins are wee little things, and I found one that reminded me a bit of Lucille Ball. I had to engage in operation covert picture taking, so my apologies for the composition.



Maybe not Lucille Ball, but certainly... something. Wow. I can imagine that being in that store in the dark might possibly be one of the most frightening things I could fathom.

One of the things I love about Europe (since we all know that it's just a country anyway) is that the public transportation here is excellent. Sometimes the stops are a little ghetto,



and some of the lines are a little retro,



but some of them are just cool.



Et ca suffit pour moi.