Winding down with a bowl of slightly-less successful pasta (due to an overslight tip of the wrist with the jar of coriander seeds), tonight is online bridge night and a wee stretching of the brain.
Four hours seated between two heavy-breathing men at the pr�fecture is enough time to read, get sore eyes, and start thinking too hard.
I need more schooling. That one's easy, since it's impossible before the fall, and planning for it impossible before the end of the spring. But the idea is in my head and I have two years to get moving on it.
More fitness, I want to be able to, as Mr. Pyke put it, jog to the top of Montmartres without seeing stars that I don't want to be seeing.
Thursday's *planned* rollerblading lesson with Anna Maria and whoever else we can dig up is part of that point.
Harder things were the mental confrontation of a point I'd made with my parents when younger and wilder, that it would never be a white wedding, nor any of the things they'd learned on Leave it to Beaver images of The Great Americas from their black and white TV set in Poland. Confronting myself with that as an adult (for some reason it feels different now) took a bit of hard swallowing. The fact that the myriad of white gown displays along the way to work did nothing to peak my interest was a sign that I was being honest with myself.
I never wanted it. Admiring Ford's brave decision in that vein helped. Enourmously.
An e-mail announcing that the wedding photos from a year ago, from a childhood friend were in, were a difficult thing as well. The hoo-ing and oo-ing at what an angelic thing the Monstre grew up to be by my parents' childhood friends, and the glow in their faces that they expected the similar shebang from me resulted in painful things.
But we are working on our relationships as adults, and it's easy to clench my shoulderblades and promise myself to continue to be all growed up with them from out here.
I have time. Oodles of time.
And a bridge game to play, meetings tomorrow with far-too-large companies and with Gemplus on Wednesday, and today I practiced my polite french e-mail salutations.
Soon, I will unclench a few teeth and put the stars precisely where they should be most shining.