I just had the first good shit in my appartment in weeks.
I've got tea and cookies and it's finally starting to feel a little more like my appartment and a little less like the next in a long string of strange beds.
And it's a mess. A wonderful mess. Stuff I didn't get around to putting away when I hopped off the plane straight into a whirlwind of new projects, princess' hair still hiding in secluded corners of the bathroom, as though she'd only just left...
I washed my dishes before leaving of course, I've learned THAT lesson, but peering about at this pile of paperwork, that pile of origami stuff, this pile of clothes unceremoniously dumped over the floor then kicked around by my 5am bathroom race...
And I'm talking to Alex on icq, like I haven't done in far too many weeks, remembering my inane chatter the day we met at Montparnasse, my stalkers and african princes... Idly wondering why in hell he's stayed in touch.
But he has, and he's talking about his new Star Trek DVDs and Logan's Run and the original Planet of the Apes and how SF should be shared and oh gods, if I were in town for more than two days in a row over the next two weeks I would SO be telling everyone to fuck off and heading over there with a bottle of wine and munchies.
And they're so sweet, too. Maja's birthday party tonight and everyone rather insistent that tonight not be a "everyone there but monstre" night, eighteen messages on my phone, one from Cristal in tears...
In tears.
I've been causing so many damned tears.
Last night on the train is almost lost already to today's flurry of trying to catch up on the other project, organize my place, figure out where I have to be this week...
Aside from Limoges, of course.
Last night, the usual 20h08 train that arrives in Paris at 23h11, every night, every time I return, was different.
I hadn't realized that I'd never taken it on a friday.
I hadn't reserved seats.
And for the first time in the suddenly hard-to-count number of times I've taken that train...
It was packed. Even the smoking wagon. The whole train. Utterly packed.
I ended up sitting between two cars, with a young rubgy player, laughing at all the football players/fans running past in their uniforms, in their futile but comically agressive search for seats.
We sat on the filthy floor in our grownup clothes, talked of the books we were reading, my Callahan's Lady (the second time I read it through this week) and his second book of the HYperion series.
Of how people in Europe just generally tend to read more, even SF.
Of... a thousand things until he got off at Chateauroux and left me alone with the footballers.
I felt like a student again, half-asleep on the floor, hidden in a corner of the wrong part of a train, heading for Bretagne or Normandie before the TGV could traipse all the way there and it was an 11 hour overnight ride.
But Stephane wasn't there this time to cushion my head and talk of juggling and beautiful women, the catamaran and his glorious family on the other end waiting for us with fruit and smiles and warmth.
But there was my bed, and I resisted the urge to check what kind of complimentary bath gel they'd left in the bathroom...
And now there's tea and cookies and the mad rush to get a few things done before I have to be friendly tonight.
I'll enjoy it. I know I will. I'll laugh and giggle and there will be warm faces everywhere.
Until then, I'm going to worry about where and how to house two girls in this place, how it's going to interfere with my project, the eight billion emails that require replies...
I'm going to go take a bath with my tea. Things are always clearer when I'm cleaner.