Yesterday wouldn't stop moving.
From the moment I updated, the phone rang, Seb screaming that I was late, that I'd better be dressed... My unwashed curls braided along the side of my head and my comfy boots zipped to the calf and we were off, Stephane and I riding in back while Seb's new girlfriend sang songs from Bretagne all the way to the "salon du modelisme".
We were late, but Anna Maria, Annik, Guillaume and Patrice had tickets for us and we beat the thousand people line.
We wandered about, oohing at model airplanes, helicopters, trains sets that made my jealous inner twelve-year-old drool.
The presenters let me play with the cranes, tranes, and automobiles, Seb shaking his head wondering how I managed to let them convince me to play with their toys. Guillaume was looking a little enviously emerald too.
Wandering past the Origami booth, I raced the demonstrator in his bunny rabbit folding, presented Annik with its floppy ears and she smiled for the first time since her boy ditched her last week.
The origami displays were disappointing, all stuff I can do, most of it from the Great Insect Book, and the rest were models of Kawasaki rose folds, but the simple ones.
But we talked, and I found the paper I'd been looking for, and when Anna Maria pulled out the ressort I'd given her, they raised their eyebrows high enough to invite me to join the "MFPP" - the Movement Francais des Plieurs de Papier.
Seb grabbed a few examples of their latest newsletter, I promised the boys to teach them to make roses, promised the girls to teach them to make prowling cats.
Then we found the gamers.
Medieval castles rising up about us from the modelling tables, a million board games for us to try, Indian billiards and spherical checkers, and coloured geometrical four-person chess, where I beat the day's high score on sheer luck, and the presenter asked me what I was doing later that evening.
"Going sugaring off in Issy les Moulineaux, but thanks for the offer."
Seb wanted us to play "Loup", a card-game which somehow brought out the somnolent role-player in me.
We played, and the gamemaster blinked and blinked again at how swiftly we beat the werewolves.
Again and again. Then we played ELixir, another card game in which we threw spells at each other, in which Guillaume had to say "Saperlipopette" at the beginning of every sentence, Stephane had to sing us a song, I had to recite a poem, take off an item of clothing (they were very insistent that it not be my scarf), and promise to do Guillaume's dishes on Monday night.
It got weirder from there, and we laughed so hard that the crowd trippled and when it was time for me to skip around the table on one foot, the crowd took a while moving out of the way.
We played a thousand games, and leafed through a handful more, and I realized just how much I miss gaming, with cards or character sheets.
Talk of games we've played with the staffers and I was suddenly dreaming again.
We're going to run a white wolf campaign in June.
I'm storytelling. Seb wants to be a gangrel. He's never role-played, but his flashing eyes as we played wolves yesterday afternoon showed just how much he's going to love it.
Assuming I can storytell in french. Last night, half unconscious in the car ride back from sugaring off towards 2am (a party at which I sat with my back against the balcony and sang and laughed along on full automatic, charmed Daniel's girlfriend who didn't know anyone, hugged Gretchen, and generally smiled as wide as I could when my brain failed and the words wouldn't come), I told them the stories of the clans, the Camarilla and the Sabbat, the book of Nod, and a few stories that just sort of came about as I was telling them.
The gang seemed to like it. My heart would have been bursting had it not been so tired.
I didn't go rollerblading today, I slept until noon, excited that my princess will be here so soon, counted the number of people that will be here for dinner TUesday night.
Thirteen.
Lucky number.
Four canadians, an italian, two goths, seven women, four of which are single, one of which is taken but lives as though I was alone in the world.
Dessert, raclette, salad, drinks, all taken care of. The hors d'oeuvres have yet to pop into my head.
My plane tickets are leaning against the stereo, Brassens crooning and my heart dreaming still.