Sidewinder

So, the NY times article goes a little like this: Study Says Echinacea Has No Effect on Colds. I cannot count the number of times I've caught a cold and listened through a miserable haze to hear someone telling me, with evangelical intensity, to TAKE THE ECHINACEA. Forgive me if I feel silly spending $7.00 on a sketchy brown bottle with a picture of a thistle on it. I actually have very little faith in thistles. I don't know what it is about echinacea that makes people act so passionately on its behalf. O ye of little faith!

Posted by bella at 12:25 PM | Permalink

Today we bought a bed. It's almost like when you graduate to a big person's bed after the crib. I can remember being about three and looking at all the space around me, thinking "wow, if only people would take me seriously now." (I embellish) So, this time, I have graduated from the futon. I wonder what ontological space the futon occupies in our cultural lexicon. The futon, for the garden-variety liberal arts educated ex-suburbanites is a wholesale rejection of the bedroom in their parents' house that they claim to have left. Put a copy of something by Kafka next to it and a hipster is born. But today I present to you my Serta Perfect Sleeper .
The Kafka is now in a box somewhere, and I plan to replace it with something along the lines of "The Cat Who Took the Bar Exam".

Posted by bella at 08:18 PM | Permalink

Why my parents chose Pittsburgh as a place to live, say, over San Francisco or Chicago, is still something of a mystery to me. In the 1960's, Pittsburgh had not yet gone through its much-trumpeted "renaissance", so there must have been an irresistable reason for this madness. It's my suspicion that the opportunity to study big magnets was thrown in to sweeten the deal. It scares me not a little to know that that's a thing I can appreciate. Fast forward to physics class in the ninth grade and the domestic enthusiasm which followed. All told, this is a city I'm proud to have come from.

Fast-forward again to our honeymoon in Paris. On our second to last day there, we opt to sample the nouvelle nouvelle-cuisine of the Atelier of Joel Robuchon. Despite a number of menu-related mishaps (I thought a crab soup was actually a turtle soup, ordered veal thyroid glands for Andy-- shall I go on?) and a waitstaff which caters largely to Americans and who must have gotten the memo to smile A LOT, it was an experience I'd happily repeat. All that smiling was fine, were it not for the strange timing of it. As the third glass of wine was poured, things began to seem more and more like we were living a movie. On my right was a young Quebecois woman flirting with our deadpan waiter, and on my left the trophy wife of the guy who supposedly owns and runs the "House of Blues" chain back in the States. Further to my left was a father and daughter, who in 3/4 profile looked nearly and scarily identical.

So the deadpan waiter gets me in his sights and asks me where I'm from. I falter and say the thing I remember learning to say sometime in 1989: "Je viens du Pittsburgh", and "Pittsburgh" comes out sounding embarrassingly like "Peets-boourgh". Spoken with a French or American accent, it's a terrible thing to have to go through, and something I hoped I'd never be forced to say after the tenth grade.

The waiter then gestures over to guy with his girlfriend to our far right and tells them that I'm from Pittsburgh. Picture Chandler from "Friends" trying to look like Oscar Wilde and you're close. So, unbelievably, (we'll call him Chandlere) Chandlere says to me "Oh, je suis de Allentown (Allen-tuune). C'est pas la meme chose." [Oh, I come from Allentown (you barefoot hillbilly). It's not the same thing.] Did he giggle derisively after? I don't know. What I do know is this: that I was possessed by a force much larger than myself and that the force keeping me from jumping over the counter and throwing my glass of wine into his stupid sartre-y eyeglasses happened to be stronger. Maybe Andy leaned over and said "Just eat your scary turtle soup, dear. Don't mind him." It wasn't until two courses later that I realized I had a good story for my friends.

Posted by bella at 08:34 PM | Permalink

Here's what I found out about my French skills during my stay in Paris-- that most Parisiens were not rude or dismissive of me or any of those things that people say they are, simply a little perplexed that someone with so strange an accent was capable of forming complex sentences. This is what a liberal arts degree in French will get you. At the H & M, where I found a pair of short pants for Andy, since it was 95 degrees out and we knew that shorts were not an option (though, as it turned out, Andy just ended up looking a little like a tourist who thought he was passing with the short pants), I asked the shopkeeper if he could change into them there. This is what I said:

"Est-ce-qu'il pourrait changer des vetements ici? Parce qu'il fait trop chaud pour les jeans. Nous ne voudrions pas voler aucun chose."

Here is a translation:

What I thought I said: "Could he change his pants here, since it's too hot for jeans? We don't want to seem like we're stealing."

I think this is what I REALLY said: "Would it be at all possible for him to change his vestments here? Because the weather is too warm for jeans. We would never desire stealing any one thing."

The shopkeeper considered me for a moment with a completely unreadable expression and said "les cabines sont la-bas." (the dressing rooms are over there) and that was that.

Posted by bella at 10:07 AM | Permalink