Short and Sweet

Just a quick one. My mom arrives in 8 hours....and I realize that it has been, oh, 10 years since we last spent 6 days together...just mom and me! I can't believe it. And I am ready (and with a clean apartment!) for some nice bonding time. Might even re-walk our last time together, which was right here in this very city, when I got my purse stolen, lost my passport, had to run to the American consulate on the day we were getting on a train for Italy and mom had to find boxes to wrap up and send home the winter clothes she'd packed and didn't need! We were here during the World Cup....while it was in Paris...when France won and the night of the stolen purse when we wandered back to our hotel at 2am, small French cars packed with flag-waving, scarf-wearing Frenchmen circled the block with their horns blaring. That was 10 years ago. And we wandered this city feeling very foreign and ordered with trepidation...when the smells were different and the streets unfamiliar. And this time it's my city, which I can share with my mom...starting with a haircut with my hairdresser tomorrow, followed by lunch in Montmartre (Josh, I promise we're going to the same resto you and I ate at!)....and Edith will be our tour guide in the Louvre and we will hang out in the café and see Molly's baby and do a dinner with her mom when her visit overlaps my mom's visit...and we will celebrate my 30th birthday with people who know me well but haven't known me long...and we will clean my windows and plant my flower boxes and go to an antique/art fair and sit in parks. We will look at cherry blossom trees and reminisce about Door County and eat Sunday brunch and probably do some shopping.
And I can't wait. 8 hours. Now 7hours40minutes. Must go to bed. Clean, ironed sheets. Vacuumed and on-hands-and-knees-scrubbed floor...forgot to buy fresh flowers but we can pick out some tulips tomorrow.
Good night!

Random thoughts

Two nights ago it snowed. There will still piles on the wooden decks around the library when I arrived in the afternoon. This is a strange place...where we have spring-like weather all winter and then have snow in the spring. Alas. I saw Alicia Keys in concert with Mél, Kat, and Laetitia last week, and I will say that her voice is absolutely incredible, maybe even better live than on her albums. More rich, more varied...and she never stops! But. She, as a person, disappointed me. I guess we don't get the same media coverage over here, because I seemed to be outta the loop that she IS an immature person who doesn't have a whole lot of depth. Nobody at home was surprised when I made that remark about her personality (or lack thereof!) during the concert! But I was surprised. She was packaged, scripted. So now we have a big group going to see Mary J. Blige in June. I have pretty high hopes for her!! And then on Saturday, we threw Molly's baby shower. She loved it...and I loved seeing her and seeing Savanna!
And on a totally different subject, I should be working on my chapter that's due on Thursday...but there is a documentary on France 2 right now..."68". It's about the many, many revolutions that occurred in 1968. They just finished the portion on the US...protests against Vietnam, the assassinations of Martin Luther King and JFK. Just amazing. The images, and the interviews and video footage...the music and the history....and I just can't help but think about how the structures of power are no different now...in fact, if anything, they are stronger, more centralized, visible and covert at the same time. And yet, we have nothing of the sort today. Well, to some extent we still do in Paris, but much less in the US. Are our lives just that much easier today? Is there less to fight about, to fight for? Is my generation that complacent? That passive? That disengaged? Distracted?
I have no way of wrapping this up. Oh the times, they are a changin'.