Blue Monday

It's a blue Monday for me. L. is off again, she's been picking fruit and making money for herself. It's a sweet deal, but after an initial period of squandering with her baby-sitting money: movies, unlimited pizza outings with friends, tops in the two colours she liked rather than choosing one, she's totally miserly with her fruit-picking money, hoards every penny. I know she wants a new bike, of full adult proportions, but the fashion is to sturdy mountain bikes and she wouldn't be able to lift such a monster. I'm bikeless myself these days, for much the same reasons. We'll see.

I really feel like going shopping but the problem is I really feel like shopping in Paris. I click on Le Monde, and check out the traffic map. It is afternoon in Europe and the flood of feelings of how it was like to live there overwhelms me. It is a totally false idea that I could go to a boutique here and buy a French luxury good that would make me feel good: I want to walk in Paris and feel bad, poor, daring, in love, whatever. Paris is a garden of emotion, with a surprise at every turn. I am smarter there, musical, romantic. And the city empties out in the summer, with the serious Parisians gone seaside on vacation; it feels like an empty theater set, but for historical events.

Maybe it is because it is a grey day that I yearn to be in Paris so much. Because living there I used to miss North America. But not here, oh no. On sunny days I feel like being in California, riding the Pacific Coast highway, with glistening luxury cars zooming by. I don't even mind that they were faster: the fast life is all around me and I can totally enjoy the high without wasting my time on it. Because smart as I am from having lived in Paris...

So I'll change the beds and go shopping at the same old same old stores. I should do more on L.'s school supply list, which is taking on gargantuan proportions. They specify a 1 1/2 inch binder for a given course, and by the end of the year she's dragging home an overstuffed maimed graffiti victim. The school teaches a methodology course but it is concerned with research findings on memory rather than how to rotate between binders and files, a tricky piece of work for someone who, at school, doesn't have a home desk but a locker stuffed with books and clothes, and gym clothes, and lunch, and a mirror and comb and toothbrush, stuck close to the wall, with a lot of other girls and guys near by. The Martha Stewart magazine crowd isn't much help on such issues either: they are either showing me how to make brownies or telling me to eat carrots. Maybe I'm just jaded.

So the sun is starting to show. I'll walk and maybe take a few pictures. I really feel like snapping all the wonderful summer flowers on the lawns of the various houses near the shopping center but I'm afraid to get into trouble. Summer flowers are dark-coloured, from all that chlorophyll but the grass often seems dried out although it rains all the time. Maybe it is the effect of shorter days - although not that much at this time of year- or a soil nutrient problem.

Who am I kidding. I'll go clothes shopping and get something romantic for L. and a Wal-Mart California t-shirt for myself. Rock on!