Art et Artichokes

So on Thursday we had again errands - this time to Fed Ex which is conveniently located by all the major department stores. I was grateful that it was actually a Fed Ex office, with live persons who wanted to help. But like all things French, confusion reigned. All I had to do was type a few things in - but of course the keypad was French, meaning the letters are not distributed the same way and some of the keys are different. I had forgotten this. Decades of using an American keyboard meant that a two-minute task took 20. The kids just laughed at me - spelling everything with a Q then not being able to find the Q when I needed it. But eventually we finished, and I snuck in a few minutes of shoe shopping and found some ankle boots. It is, in short, really chilly here and I did not pack any of my 3 pair of boots.

In the afternoon we visited the Pompidou Centre and it is still butt ugly on the outside, but oh how beautiful inside, although the escalator overlooking the outdoors makes me stomach sick. The museum houses an incredible collection of modern and contemporary work, and I forget that I miss DC's museums and stopping in to see the Dubuffets and Kandinskys and Miros and Picassos. Lovely thing is that they have the wisdom here to skip the Motherwells. Apparently they never made it past the gravitational pull of DC.

Rachel cracked me up when she noted in her what's the big deal voice that the Ad Reinhardt black canvas and the Yves Klein blue canvas were both just rectangles with one color paint, one black, one blue - that they were just alike, practically. In one way you can't argue with that, but I had never put those two together in any part of my mind.

I also had to explain why on the other floor there were no normal paintings, and why the Guerilla Girrrls existed, and why having a neon flashing sign that alternatively spelled out HIP USA and ASS was in a museum.

Friday evening was date night, and Stephen and I stepped out to Mama Shelter which is way the heck out by Pere LaChaise. I think we were in need of something that looked like New York. I had some drink called the Brazilian Mule that involved lemon and ginger beer, then I had the most beautiful artichoke (and switched to wine, thank you) I have ever laid eyes on. Being the trendsetter, I noticed that people all over the room followed my lead and ordered one too. There is something deeply visceral and satisfying about eating an artichoke in public.