Recipe to curb the melancholic denouement of an overcharged evening:
Take one princess, who, once in bed and gabbing solidly about very unladylike things, finally peters out only to announce:
"I'm hungry. I'm going to go have some chocolate cake."
Now keep in mind that we had a raclette party last night. With chocolate cake, oeufs au lait, and exotic fruit salad for dessert.
You know, it doesn't GET heavier than raclette, it's skier food. Potatoes and meat and brocolli and cauliflower and grilled peppers and zuchinni and pickled onions and cheeeeese cheeeeeeeese...
In any case, because princess is hungry and wants cake, this means she has to go to the bathroom.
(damn, I'm cracking up already and I haven't gotten to the dull thudding part yet.)
This makes sense of course, I just don't know where.
So. To recap in my head, Mr. Pyke had just been released from his three am (out here, 9pm there) cheering up duties (at which he did most excellently, especially the bit about dry humping and multiple orgasms being mutually exclusive), I'd just finished reading Steve's 26kilobytes of sheer wonderfulness e-mail and succumbed to princess' order to head to bed.
Then she gets hungry, so she goes to the bathroom.
Right.
Then there's this dull thud, after the flushing of the toilet and her announcement that my bathroom is SO COOOL for reasons only a princess can understand at what is now going on four in the morning.
Then there's an ow, and much vociferation about where that wall came from.
Giggling ensues until princess announces that she's bleeding.
She comes staggering in, switches on the VERY BRIGHT hallogen light by my bed, and her faces appears out of nowhere, grinning somewhat maniacally, teeth smeared with blood.
My princess had a fight with a wall at four in the morning because she was hungry for chocolate cake, less than twenty hours after arriving in France.
This sinks in.
Moments later we're laughing too hard to breathe, convulsing everywhere, trying to figure out how to band-aid the inside of her upper lip which she is CONVINCED is swollen.
"But it won't stick and it'll fall off and I'll choke on it."
"Man, I'd hate to explain that to your boyfriend, I'm sorry, princess got hungry for cake so she had a fight with the wall in my deceptively smooth hallway and choked to death on a band-aid."
"Well, it's better than bleeding to death... I think I cut open my vein".
"There's no vein in your lip."
More convulsions.
I'm losing track of the order, but somehow there are scenes in my memory of the blue cake plate against the blue carpet, princess on her knees eating it because the chocolate will fix her lip, all the while me trying to decide if she's going to die of blood loss or of choking on the blood or of choking on the band-aid.
"We should call Mr. Pyke. And your bf. And David. And uh..."
Finally, still giggling in spurts, we collapsed into exhausted sleep.
This morning she comes running up with her perfectly UNswollen lip.
I haven't checked out the wall yet, I can't move for the renewed convulsions of laughter.
Last night, before all this madness, my heart was screaming for Cristal who I hadn't seen in too long, who brought the brightest bouquet with a note that tore at my heartstrings.
"Thank you for bringing so much joy into our lives, I miss you."
I'm missing the innocent anticipation of travelling for work, the burbling before it became routine stress, I love the project and the people and the eccentric hotel, but...
...not the train rides, the packing and unpacking and living out of a bag, the unfamiliar scent of my appartment, the repeated shock of re-accustomization to the stench of the parisian m�tro at midnight, the disappointed messages on my answering machine from people who no longer know if I'm ever in town.
And the lack of David. Oh, David, good luck today, but you won't need it, you're brilliant and it won't take long for them to realize how good you are. Knock 'em dead, there'll be extra blowjob points awarded for style if you knock 'em all down in neat little rows.
Oh, David, my David, my heart is breaking at how much I miss you. All this moving about and my heart soars if I even manage to talk to you... I miss the the smooth banter of daily icq giggling fests, the rumbling baritone of your voice across ocean lines, the colour of magic over the lines of communication, how deeply we manage to touch with handfuls of words. If it weren't for these diaries that act as lifeline...
Last night, as fourteen people filed out after coffee and tea and innumerable games of "Loup", Annik on Guillaume's arm after the trouble Seb and I went to hooking them up.
He left without a goodbye, hot on her heels, and I am ashamed of the pang of jealousy, so pretty she is, her quiet charm. I'm losing a good billiards teacher, and in the fatigue of the evening I felt suddenly alone.
Until princess touched my arm and for once I wasn't alone in the aftermath of a party.
Today I leave for Limoges, to return Monday, to leave again Wednesday, to leave for three days the week after, and then I'll have time to change bags and I'll be in Montreal.
With my CV in my hand.
Yesterday, my commerciale called with another contract offer, something I'm more than qualified to do, but hate the direction it'll take my CV.
I'm tired of this. I want to bring Cristal and Marie-Nat and Jean-Michel and Pierre and Seb to Montreal, and sit on the mountain on a Sunday afternoon, listening to the 'tams.