A Long Way to Drive

Well, France's unofficial official motto may be "French Bureacracy: Not Infamous for Nothing" but that doesn't mean they have the monopoly on annoying, crazy bureacracy. And so, I find myself flying 20 hours door to door, from Paris via O'Hare to San Francisco, in order to renew my California driver's license. Set to expire on my birthday next month, I have recently learned that there is no way I can renew it by mail or online because I've renewed it the last two times remotely. I was living in San Francisco at the times, but was just lazy and never saw the downside of avoiding a trip to the Department of Motor Vehicles. Well, I see the downside now. California law says after two remote renewals, a person must renew in person, at the counter of the DMV, in order to re-test and update the photo.

 

 

I can't transfer my license to France because France has a reciprocal agreement only with certain states: Arkansas, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Illinois, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, New Hampshire, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Texas, and Virginia, none of them states that most American drivers in France actually come from. That means that in order to get a French license, I would have to take the course, the test, and pay the fee, and believe it or not, that would probably take me at least several months and just the fee for the license alone (not even the course) would be upwards of a thousand dollars. It is notoriously difficult to get a license in France. And, frankly, because France would require me to relinquish my California license, then I'd have to turn around and re-take both written and road tests when I move back to the US.

So, for a bargain $650 airfare, four days of my time, four horrible plane movies* (one of them played three seperate times: for the morbidly curious, see below), and a heap of jet-lag both directions, I commute 20 hours each way to stay two days and go to a 45 minute appointment at the DMV. At least it works, and I walk away with my new driver's license -- only one wrong out of 18 on the test it turns out I have to take (in emergency circumstances, it is OK to use a cell phone in your hands while driving). Not only am I good to go when I move back to San Francisco, it also means that I can drive rental cars while we live and travel in Europe.

On the positive side, I do get to see my new niece (a.k.a. the cutest baby in the world):



And the colors of San Francisco, complete with warm weather and spring plum blossoms starting to bloom. Meanwhile, back in Paris, it's gray, freezing, and snowing/raining.

 

I get fresh-squeezed lemonade -- lemon juice in a cup, simple syrup to sweet, and water to dilute -- and creative California cuisine; here it's French toast made from challah stuffed with mascarpone cheese and topped with lemon curd.

And last but not least, a special field trip to Trader Joe's to buy ridiculous amounts of cereal, seaweed snacks, and other ingredients that are hard to find or too expensive in Paris.


I have come with luggage full of hand-me-downs and gifts to give away, and even a carry-on packed inside my big luggage. All with the expectation that I would bring back groceries. Weirdest suitcase ever. Staying with my friends, the girls help me take the 15 boxes of cereal out of their cartons to make more space. Everything makes it across the world just perfectly. I mean, let's face it, Joe's O's (which are essentially Cheerios) make perfect packing peanuts.

 

*The following are the four films shown on a small screen at the front of the cabin on the four legs of my American Airlines flights, on a schedule determined by the air crew. Anthony did not know planes without private on-demand screens were even still flying. My friend Sarah has dubbed my movie/plane experience "cruel", and I'm inclined to agree, except for the fact that it means I got a lot of needed sleep I might otherwise have skipped.

 

The Lucky One, a Nicolas Sparks romance, starring Zac Efron. Shown three times, twice of those in immediate succession. Mushy and formulaic.

Trouble with the Curve, a movie with Clint Eastwood and Amy Adams, which sounds promising, except that it's about baseball and is horribly predictable.

Sparkle, starring American Idol star Jordan Sparks and Whitney Houston. Before she died, obviously. A Dreamgirls rip-off.

Here Comes the Boom, in which (spoiler alert) Kevin James as a high school science teacher fights in Mixed Martial Arts bouts in order to raise money to save the school's music program, led by Henry Winkler, and in order to get the girl, Salma Hayak. Enough said.

 

Four Updates and a Confession

Four Updates

1) I am me, and only I am me. My identity is safe. After putting the fraud alert on my credit cards, carefully checking them, and discovering no anomolies, I ordered a copy of my driver's license and discovered why a Texas address suddenly appeared on it. Anthony called in our French addresses to update our licenses. And indeed, my French street address on the updated license is correct. But, if you google the 75004 area code, you will notice that it applies not only to the Marais district in Paris, but also Blue Ridge, TX. I figure it was a bureaucrat who entered my new zip code into the standard zip code box, and it automatically generated Blue Ridge. So the Texans are not to blame for my driver's license snafu. Just for some politicians who shall remain nameless.

Meanwhile, in the first theft, I lost my nice wallet. In the second theft, I lost the ugly old black leather man wallet I was using. And now I am reduced to using this, some freebie swag that, at some point, was given to the girls for a toy. It is too ugly even for young children and so is now sitting unused in a drawer and is therefore available to be my wallet. You can imagine how fabulous it looks in a Parisian store when I whip out this baby to pay for my purchase.

While in Maine at Aunt Lisa's house, Gigi uses the sewing machine and makes this little pouch for me, and it turns out by complete coincidence to be exactly the right size. So I am now the proud owner of a hand-made, high-fashion couture wallet, inside which lives the zippered Coconut Creek eyesore.

 

 

 

2) The second family to visit us this summer doesn't eat mammals, and the 10-year old is a true vegetarian, and then we watched the movie Babe. So I figured for sure Gigi would go full veg and start to refuse all pork, red meat, and possibly even poultry. And I have to admit I myself have had vegetarian phases, so all of that can easily set me over the edge, too. But now she claims to enjoy not just chicken and turkey but also lamb, pork roast, ham, and bacon. Go figure.

3) I thought I would get a new cell phone, but instead I went in, got a new plan, and discovered that my existing phone could be re-set. So, now I can actually type texts. Before, I could type in the first letter, but when I typed in the second letter, it would change the first one, and when I typed in the third letter, it would change the previous two. Needless to say, I never got past three letters, since it was rendered complete gibberish. In addition, I had them adjust the clock while I was in there, so that when it says 14:32, it is, in fact, 2:32 in the afternoon, and I do not have to add 2, subtract 12, and take its square root divided by the quotient of a math problem I solved in sixth grade where one train was going in one direction, and another train was going in another direction, and they met in the middle.

4) While I was visiting my parents in Boston, I went to a professional nitpicker and for a bargain fee of $50 got my head checked. I got the official all clear, and any remaining itchiness was, in fact, not on my head but rather in my head. As soon as I knew I had no more nits or lice, the itching stopped. Sitting on a linoleum floor chez the nitpicker was not nearly as pleasant as chatting with a friend poolside, but it did give me the desired outcome.

And a Confession:

5) Virtually none of the postings from the last two to three months has been published on the day it was actually experienced. Here's our actual time line, which may put into perspective why I couldn't write about it as I was living it.

June 3-10: Anthony's brother and sister-in-law in town
June 19: Family #1comes to visit
June 23: Medieval Fair at Provins (published on Aug 5)
June 24-30: Trip to Provence (published Aug 11-22)
June 29: Anthony leaves for business trip
July 2 Family #1 leaves
July 3: Girls last day of school then dinner with my visiting Aunt and Uncle
July 4: Pippa struts the catwalk (published July 5! My one timely posting all summer!)
July 5: I dance on stage for a Hawaiian festival, after intensive rehearsals leading up to it
July 6: Family #2 comes to visit
July 12-13: Family #2 is busy with other friends in town. Meanwhile, Family #3 from San Francisco visit us for these exact two days (published Aug 22)
July 15 at 10am: Family #2 leaves our apartment to return to the US
July 15 at 10:01am: Pippa proclaims, "I'm going to be bored. Starting right now!"
July 18-July 23: We visit Bretagne (published on Aug 26-29)
July 23-July 27: We visit Normandy (published on Aug 31)
July 31: Friends from San Francisco come for dinner; we only overlap with them this one day
Aug 1: Plane to Boston, arrive at night
Aug 2: Dentist in the morning for both girls. Cousin family #1 arrives from NYC for the weekend
Aug 4: College roommate comes to Boston from Philadelphia
Aug 5: Take Gigi to her first sleepaway camp
Aug 6: Pippa starts tennis camp. NYC cousins leave
Aug 10: Anthony arrives from a business trip in Montreal
Aug 11-18: Pick up Gigi from camp, drive to Acadia National Park with sister and family
Aug 19-20: Return with sister for more visiting at her house near Portland, Maine
Aut 21-23: Trip to Cape Cod to see Family #1 again
Aug 23-26: Back in Boston, Cousin family #2 arrives from NYC for the weekend.
Aug 27: See cousins on Anthony's side that live 20 minutes from parents in Boston, yet haven't had one minute of overlap with them since we arrived in USA till now.
Aug 30: Back to France, arrive on Aug 31.

And now you know why I'm talking about sunsets at 11pm when it's almost September, or why the same visitors appear in photos over a month apart. I'll write up some tidbits from our American travels in a separate destination blog -- eventually, and you'll be reading about summer in Maine when there's snow on the ground outside your window. Till then, I'm at least back in Paris and back to real-time. The girls go back to school in 3 days, and I'm looking forward to it at least as much as they are. Summer was fun, but I need the school year so that I can get a break!


 

Arrival in Paris

Walk nearly to the Eiffel Tower on our first day, only to get so overcome by jet-lag that we have to drag ourselves back to the little rental apartment on the French 5th floor (that's 6th floor to you and me).  The girls can barely walk back.  Then while Anthony and I try to take a nap, the girls are hit with a bizarre second wind and spend the entire hour running up and down the six flights of stairs and trying out the miniature elevator which, it turns out, is pretty typical of these old, retro-fitted French buildings.  After doing enough stairs to train a soccer player, and doing it so loudly that there is no hope of us actually napping, we all give up and go to the grocery store where P (our 6 year old) almost instantly falls asleep on Anthony's shoulder.  It is about 5pm (or 17h, as they say...), so we have to wake her up most cruelly in time to eat, at which point G (the 7-almost-8 year old) falls asleep at the table.  Tomorrow will be better...