The Miss List

 

Things I miss that I didn't expect to:

• Cheap, delicious Asian restaurants (wasn't Vietnam a French colony? Aren't there loads of Asians living in Paris? Why is this so difficult?)
• Good sandwiches, including -- but not limited to -- banh mi (which is a cheap, delicious Vietnamese sandwhich, see above)
• Non-sugary, whole-grain, crunchy breakfast cereals: specifically Joe's Os/Cheerios and Barbara's Shredded Oats
• Trader Joe's nuts, candied nuts, steel-cut oats, orange-muscat chamgagne vinegar. Trader Joe's in general
• Large tubs of European-style plain yogurt (and I'm in Europe. Go figure.)
• Stonyfield organic yogurt tubes, which the girls love frozen
• The occasional summery day in the middle of winter
• Colorful houses and clothes. Bright crazy colors in general
• My Kitchen-Aid stand mixer. Different electrical outlets, so didn't bring and not worth buying here
• Good girls' soccer programs
• Being able to compost garbage through the municipality
• Dryer. Actually, Anthony's the one who misses this. Who knew he had this strong a preference for non-crunchy clothes?

  

photos 1 nd 3: http://forum.bodybuilding.com/showthread.php?t=141897461&page=1, and  http://www.foodpeoplewant.com/banh-mi-sandwich/

 

Things I miss that I knew I'd miss:

• Ton Kiang dim sum, Burma Super Star restaurants, and King of Thai Noodle, all on Clement Street. Clement Street in general -- one of San Francisco's greatest, most eclectic shopping streets
• Friends and family
• Elaborate week-long school field trips from the girls private school in SF
• Having a car, but just occasionally, for massive shopping trips
• Mangoes (cheap and good, as opposed to expensive and not great) and other tropical fruits
• Golden Gate Park -- being allowed to play on large expanses of grass
• Having more than one toilet in the house

  

left photo from: http://chineseppl.blogspot.fr/2011/08/dim-sum-etiquette-tapping-to-say-thanks.html

Things I thought I'd miss that I don't:

• My big, beautiful house in San Francisco. Still love it, but it's not going anywhere...
• Inexpensive, super-stocked second-hand clothing stores (well, I still kind of miss Goodwill, but it's also a relief not to have anything like that here, because I have no extra closet space)
• Dryer. Turns out, I don't so much mind hanging laundry or having crunchy clothes
• Gymnastics. Truth is, the gym where the girls work out here is a much, much better facility and program than the one they had in San Francisco

  

 photo from: http://newyork.citysearch.com/profile/7087814/new_york_ny/tokio_7.html

Things I first missed, but it turns out I was wrong:

• Lock lid leftover storage containers (finally found at Monoprix)
• Salsa and soft corn tortillas (finally found at Monoprix, though not much choice here)
• Ground turkey and chicken. Can get it here from butcher. But at $7 per pound

photos from: http://www.bedbathandbeyond.com/product.asp?SKU=112870 and

http://www.mysupermarket.co.uk/tesco-price-comparison/Speciality_Breads/Old_El_Paso_Soft_Flour_Tortillas_8.html

Things I do not miss at all, and knew I wouldn't:

• Driving, parking, maintaining a car
• Paying private school tuition in San Francisco (20 times higher than what we pay in Paris)
• Foggy summers

photo from: http://www.flickr.com/photos/araswami/5071149157/

Things I already know I will miss when I leave here:

• Four distinct seasons, fall leaves on the ground
• Using and hearing French all the time
• Some of what's available at the fresh produce markets, certain types of fruits and vegetables
• Cheap, great boulangeries and patisseries almost everywhere
• Our French friends
• Not having to pack a school lunch every day for the girls. Hooray for cafeterias! (But I think this is uniquely a problem of San Francisco private schools)
• Walking by Notre Dame, medieval streets, the bridges over the Seine, and Paris architecture as part of daily life
• Walking (instead of driving) the girls to school
• Quick access to limitless different countries, languages, cultures, and travel destinations
• The cheese. The cheese. And the cheese

 

But by far the thing I miss most of all...

 

...and the one thing that actually makes my heart ache is that I have missed my cousin's entire pregnancy and the birth of my niece. Well, technically she will be my second-cousin-once-removed, but I will consider her a niece nonetheless, and she is going to be born any day, any minute, in the hospital right where my own girls were born, just a few blocks away from our house in San Francisco. If we were there, we would have raced for the privilege of being the first ones to meet that little baby girl (probably having to emerge victorious in a real smackdown wrestle in the hospital corridors with the baby's grandparents who live locally). Thank goodness for Skype, but it's just not the same.

Here's Pippa (with Elmo) as a newborn, at that same hospital.

 

And here's Gigi as a newborn: same hospital, same hat, different blanket. What will the hospital-issued blankets look like now? Here's my cousin, holding Gigi as a newborn, but any second now, he'll be holding his own little miss! (And yes, I realize if you're trying to make sense of this blog that the one who is actually pregnant and just about to give birth would technically be, therefore, my cousin-in-law -- and actually my second-cousin-in-law -- but I think you'll agree that just "cousin" reads better.)

 

 In this case, it's not so much "Wish you were here" as a big fat "Wish I were there!"