We've broken out the sandals, the sundresses, the sunglasses, and the sunscreen. Springtime in Paris seems to have come and gone, and now we're into early summer. It's lovely, but dangerous, since the wind picks up a lot while I'm wearing flouncy miniskirts. That and walking over subway grates has let to a few Marylin Monroe moments, and let's just say I'm having to be more careful about underwear selection.
The wind is dangerous for my eyes, too, having been told last summer by an opthometrist that I am a "bad blinker". Before this, if you had asked me to list everything I was not good at, the list would have been long, but it wouldn't have included blinking. Now I know why I always get schmutz blown into my eye when it's windy. In Paris, it can really blow, and San Francisco is practically a windfarm. So I either need to pick different places or learn to blink better.
(Complete aside: on a camping trip in college, a bunch of us were sitting outside a tent of freshmen boys who apparently believed that thin layers of nylon are soundproof. They were, of course, talking about sex, and one of them claimed (complained? boasted?) that he got a hard-on every time the wind blew. At which point another boy asked, "Wait, aren't you from Chicago?")
But our confusion is not just confined to the merry month of May. All year we've been surprised and fascinated by the weather. Perhaps this is because we are so used to San Francisco, where there are two seasons: rainy and foggy, with a chance of fleece and jeans.
Paris has rain, too. But it's different. It's French rain. There's a figure, called the Zouave, who is on one of the old bridges that is used as a marker for flooding. When it hits the Zouave, you know it's gone too far. That happened about a hundred years ago, and apparently there was so much flooding at the ground floor in some neighborhoods (like ours, in the middle of the Seine) that people boated around from building to building.
Well, it certainly doesn't hit the Zouave this year, but it does rain enough in early January to flood out completely the pedestrian walkways along the Seine. P spends this period saying that she doesn't like living on an island surrounded by water, because she is afraid our building will float away.
We are here for a cold snap in February that is not record-breaking but certainly note-worthy as the longest, coldest cold snap since one in the mid-90s -- about three weeks of negative temperatures. We break out the ski jackets and ski mittens, when it turns out our regular gloves and mittens just won't do the trick. I don't think my fingers have numbed up this quickly and frequently since I lived in Minnesota. Brrrrr.
Finally, in April, we put our winter clothes away. Well, the girls and I do. I tell Anthony that we've boxes up our winter clothes and taken out our spring/summer clothes, and he looks at me with genuine surprise. "You mean, you have other clothes? All of mine are hanging in the closet!" Most shocking to a San Franciscan is that we don't need to bring jackets with us in the evening, because if it's warm during the day, it's warm at night. And the hottest part of the day is around 5pm, right when my body expects the fog to roll back in and send the temperature plummeting.
Now that the weather is (mostly) glorious, our big issue is not the temperature, however, but the light. It is light so late into the evening, I'm beginning to feel like I live in the Land of the Eternal Sun. For example, in the photo below, you probably can't tell if it is morning or night, and the only clue that it's not mid-day is the shadow over the lower part of the buildings. I can't tell if it's morning or night either, except that the time stamp says it's about 9pm, and it is taken on our way home after an evening outing.
The bigger problem is that we can't tell what time it is when we're actually living the day, either. I look out the window and assume it's 3pm, so I don't think of starting dinner, when in fact we all suddenly realize we are starved, and it's already 7:30. The girls are wide awake most evenings with that feeling that there are hours to go before bed-time, and suddenly, we're rushing them to brush their teeth and get in PJs. It's hard to convince a 6 and 8 year old to go to bed when it looks like it's about 4pm. The sun sets around 10pm now, and we're not even at the longest day of the year.
Once we're thoroughly used to four seasons, real summers, and 15 hours of sunshine per day, the real question becomes whether we'll weather the weather when we return to San Francisco.
[Editorial weather update: Click here to see a video -- in French, but the images say it all -- of a snowfall in Savoie, France, on June 1....At least it's not Paris.]
The wind is dangerous for my eyes, too, having been told last summer by an opthometrist that I am a "bad blinker". Before this, if you had asked me to list everything I was not good at, the list would have been long, but it wouldn't have included blinking. Now I know why I always get schmutz blown into my eye when it's windy. In Paris, it can really blow, and San Francisco is practically a windfarm. So I either need to pick different places or learn to blink better.
(Complete aside: on a camping trip in college, a bunch of us were sitting outside a tent of freshmen boys who apparently believed that thin layers of nylon are soundproof. They were, of course, talking about sex, and one of them claimed (complained? boasted?) that he got a hard-on every time the wind blew. At which point another boy asked, "Wait, aren't you from Chicago?")
But our confusion is not just confined to the merry month of May. All year we've been surprised and fascinated by the weather. Perhaps this is because we are so used to San Francisco, where there are two seasons: rainy and foggy, with a chance of fleece and jeans.
Paris has rain, too. But it's different. It's French rain. There's a figure, called the Zouave, who is on one of the old bridges that is used as a marker for flooding. When it hits the Zouave, you know it's gone too far. That happened about a hundred years ago, and apparently there was so much flooding at the ground floor in some neighborhoods (like ours, in the middle of the Seine) that people boated around from building to building.
Well, it certainly doesn't hit the Zouave this year, but it does rain enough in early January to flood out completely the pedestrian walkways along the Seine. P spends this period saying that she doesn't like living on an island surrounded by water, because she is afraid our building will float away.
We are here for a cold snap in February that is not record-breaking but certainly note-worthy as the longest, coldest cold snap since one in the mid-90s -- about three weeks of negative temperatures. We break out the ski jackets and ski mittens, when it turns out our regular gloves and mittens just won't do the trick. I don't think my fingers have numbed up this quickly and frequently since I lived in Minnesota. Brrrrr.
Finally, in April, we put our winter clothes away. Well, the girls and I do. I tell Anthony that we've boxes up our winter clothes and taken out our spring/summer clothes, and he looks at me with genuine surprise. "You mean, you have other clothes? All of mine are hanging in the closet!" Most shocking to a San Franciscan is that we don't need to bring jackets with us in the evening, because if it's warm during the day, it's warm at night. And the hottest part of the day is around 5pm, right when my body expects the fog to roll back in and send the temperature plummeting.
Now that the weather is (mostly) glorious, our big issue is not the temperature, however, but the light. It is light so late into the evening, I'm beginning to feel like I live in the Land of the Eternal Sun. For example, in the photo below, you probably can't tell if it is morning or night, and the only clue that it's not mid-day is the shadow over the lower part of the buildings. I can't tell if it's morning or night either, except that the time stamp says it's about 9pm, and it is taken on our way home after an evening outing.
The bigger problem is that we can't tell what time it is when we're actually living the day, either. I look out the window and assume it's 3pm, so I don't think of starting dinner, when in fact we all suddenly realize we are starved, and it's already 7:30. The girls are wide awake most evenings with that feeling that there are hours to go before bed-time, and suddenly, we're rushing them to brush their teeth and get in PJs. It's hard to convince a 6 and 8 year old to go to bed when it looks like it's about 4pm. The sun sets around 10pm now, and we're not even at the longest day of the year.
Once we're thoroughly used to four seasons, real summers, and 15 hours of sunshine per day, the real question becomes whether we'll weather the weather when we return to San Francisco.
[Editorial weather update: Click here to see a video -- in French, but the images say it all -- of a snowfall in Savoie, France, on June 1....At least it's not Paris.]
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