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Because I usually am in Vino ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** In 2009, I gave up my studies as a medievalist and musician, left my home, my family, my life and moved to Provence in southern France for a guy. In 2012, I moved away from him to study wine. Today, I'm a vagabond sommelier working in Paris at one of the oldest and most famous restaurants in the world, struggling to find some purpose to what I deem the rest of my life. I'm still married and after 8 10 years, I'm still trying to fit-in with French life and culture and to understand why the French are the way they are. Because they're weird in a different way that I think Americans are weird. Perhaps it's me who's weird. |
| I'm not sure why I'm up as early as I am. 7am sharp seems to be the hour of the week. I've woken up at that exact time every day for the past three days, no alarm needed. It's Tuesday and rather than enjoying my vacation in the moment, all I can think is "my vacation is already two days over." Clearly at the end of 7 days I will not be ready to go back to work. Some people love their jobs. Some people hate their jobs. I wish a hole in the ground would swallow me up so that I never have to work again. That's an exaggeration. Kind of. Arles does not sit well with me. It brings back too many memories of W and I don't really enjoy those anymore. I look forward to the day my husband and I move away from here. For the past 6 months I've been working up the courage to delete W from my Facebook account so that I officially and finally lost all contact with him, but I can't seem to do it. I panic every time I think I'm close. Today is the day, a voice whispers, you're over it, over him, you can finally let go. And then the panic rises up in me and screams BUT!!!! But there are no buts. But what? I've been debating asking my sister to do it for me. I know she'd understand. I think W is the reason I keep people at bay here in France. I've realized I have no friends but my husband in this country. No one but him to celebrate my birthday with on Saturday. In fact, I don't think anyone in France but him knows it's my birthday on Saturday. For once, I kind of care. I'd like people to come to Arles, to go out to dinner with me. To give me a hug. But I've kept everyone I know at a distance. I don't tell them about my birthday, I don't ask when their birthdays are. It's ok. It's not ok. I called Ana before I left for Arles and invited her to come for a visit so she could get away from G for a while, but she needs to save money for an apartment. I get it. I vowed to myself I'd be a better friend to her now. The past three weeks there was complete radio silence from me even though I know she's going through a rough time. It wasn't that I don't care, it's that I get so wrapped up in my own shit, I forget. Also, I don't think I'll ever be comfortable speaking French. Relationships are therefore hard to form. I'm almost fluent. But I hate speaking the language. I really do. Even when it falls out of my mouth as naturally as it does now, I'm always surprised. Yesterday while shopping with my husband, he asked me something in English and I responded in French without realizing it. I don't think he noticed either at first, and when I did realize I had been speaking French it was kind of a jolt, like "Why? How? Where did that come from?" I want to write more. The more time I spend in this job, the more I realize my life is slipping away from me. So far I have two tastings lined up for tomorrow. Waiting to hear back from two more and from Max - if he wants to come or not. We'll lunch at le Nez in Gigondas. I haven't smoked since Saturday night/Sunday morning. I'm ready for a tasting. |
| So three months ago I forgot about this blog. That's actually pretty good considering that I manged to keep blogging two months into my new job. I'm kind of on vacation this week, but vacation amounts to me working from home. JY was on vacation himself the past three weeks and it was up to me to run the front of the house. This meant I had no time for any of the wine stuff I usually do and have to catch up while on vacation. Most of my colleagues think that means going out to wineries and tasting new wines, which is on the list of things to do, but it's also a lot of paper work, background research and planning. And as much as tasting might be fun, it actually exhausting to be thinking of work all the time. I'll taste the wine and decide if I like it, but then I need to decide if the clients will like it, if the price is correct, if I can have it transported cheaply enough to the restaurant so that the Chef won't freak out. How many months should I expect to sell an entire order? How often should I order from the winery? Should I alternate it with other wines? etc. The Chef has asked me to put the wines of Stéphane Ogier back on the wine list. This isn't a big deal since I like his wines, I just didn't have much room on the wine list. So I called his winery two weeks ago and started asking about his wines and the woman on the other end said "One moment please" and the next thing I know Ogier himself was on the line talking to me about old vintages and special crus. This isn't that shocking, I work for a famous Chef and he apparently told Ogier I'd call. The embarrassment lay in the fact that I've met the vintner a few times at various salons and find him incredibly handsome and so just started stammering on the line. I'm kind of putting off calling him again to organize my own visit to the winery. I hate my job. I really do. It's something I try not to think about because it pays well but I kind of want to burn the restaurant down. It's not a problem with the job itself, it's the clients. They are awful. Seriously awful. The French are terrible people and I can't stand them any more. I asked the husband today if we couldn't just move somewhere else. Like Australia where they all have the best accents and is far, far from France. He said Australia was too dangerous because they have sharks, crocodiles and poisonous frogs and snakes. I asked him if he really thought all of these things would be wandering the streets of downtown Sydney (since I want to stay in a big city) and he said no, but he'd never leave the house just in case. OK then. I do love Lyon. I just wish I had more time to enjoy the city and wasn't rushing to and from work all the time. Anyway, I'm kind of staring at my work to-do list and trying to figure out what more I can do today. I want to read or play the Sims. And drink tea. Also do you know how wonderful it is to spend the day dressed but not in my work uniform? |
| The train again. As I leave Lyon and the train rolls south over the hills of Vienne and into Provence the weather changes almost instantly. From the constant grey clouds that are so prominent in Lyon, always threatening, even if they are just off the horizon, we burst into sunshine. I can almost feel the warmth, the change in the air from mild spring to almost summer through the windows of the train. The strength of the sunlight changes. The way it falls on the vine-planted slopes of Côte-Rôtie and Condrieu. The train parallels the rhone, so although the tracks are most bordered by hills and houses and industrial warehouses, I can occasionally catch a glimpse of the river that has dominated most of my time in Europe. It seems I'll never get away from the Rhône. I've lived at its source in Switzerland, I've next to its end near the Mediterranean sea, and in between. Someday I should take a couple of months off from work a hike it from one end to the other. I'm not even sure where the Rhône goes between Lyon and Geneva, though I'm pretty sure it doesn't go through Burgundy. I like this voyage. I don't like Provence, I didn't really want to leave the city this weekend, but there is something about the landscape between Lyon and Valence that sparks my attention every time. Tired as I am, I don't sleep or read or watch a movie. I like to watch the hills and the vineyards while I listen to music and daydream. As I write this I'm half daydreaming. I know that I do it a little too much, I always have and I've never quite been able to break the habit, but occasionally it's a welcome change from the frantic pace my brain and body are usually forced to keep. Even my daydreams get rushed and convoluted. To let the ramble and tumble and shift on their own time without any obligation is a rarity. It's almost a meditation. Work is work. Life is life. It, like this train, rolls along at a tedious pace until it reaches it's destination. A grim way of looking at things perhaps, but there is nothing new to report. I miss my sister, I miss my niece, I think alot about the past and what I'd like to do other than my job. One of my cats is sick and I hope it's not serious. My husband and the vet don't think so, but he is old and like a human, an infection in an elderly cat can quickly turn serious and deteriorate. I'd miss Pistou's wise and disapproving face whenever I came home. Dumpling is a adorable, but no cat I've ever had matches Pistou's inherent superiority over everything on Earth. He doesn't think he's wonderful; he knows he's a God. It's awesome and hilarious because he is, after all, a cat. Dependant on us for food, to open the doors to things (he knows how, and is even big enough to reach the handles, but he's too much of a God to do it himself), and to clean his litter box. There's no thanks in any of these things though. He just swaggers on by with a nod of the head like the queen waving royally to her subjects. |
| More work drama. I spent the past two weeks working my ass off to get the new wine list out and Saturday was a total bust in terms of sales. After 200 clients I sold barely 36 bottles of wine. I'm disappointed in myself despite knowing that there are times when sales are in a slump. It's totally normal, but it still pisses me off given all the work I did. Then there's Alexis, the premier chef de rang. What is a premier chef de rang, you ask? It's kind of the head server who supposedly is in charge of the other servers. Except he's lazy, egotistical, a pathological liar, and fat. That last one has nothing to do with anything but I just wanted to get a last dig in. I'm almost positive he's trying to throw me under the bus and undermine my work. I talked to a friend (who's worked with him) about it and she agreed completely. The guy only talks about himself and according to him, he's seen it all and done it all. When I happened to mention that I run in the mornings he told me he had a black belt tae kwon do. I don't know anyone his size with a black belt in any martial art. He told my friend (who's an artist and works in restaurants to pay for school) that he was going to be an artist but then decided that he loved the restaurant industry more. He also told me he has his sommelier diploma, but I'm starting to highly doubt that since he doesn't know anything outside wine other than the wines he's already tasted. We're also pretty sure he posted a tripadvisor review online raving about himself and slamming the other servers. I also don't agree with his method in training the interns and extras. His method is to watch them do it wrong and then correct them. He claims this is the only way they'll learn. He also doesn't seem to realize that it's humiliating, frustrating, and takes twice as long as it would if you showed them the right way the first time around. Also, you shouldn't be trying to make yourself feel superior to everyone else when you can't even clean a toilet correctly. I corrected him on that and he mocked me about it. I let it go this time, but the next time I won't be so kind. I clean the bathroom, JY cleans the bathroom, all the servers have had to clean the bathrooms. Once in a while he can get off his fat ass and clean the bathrooms. Correctly. The other day the Chef came by to introduce us to a friend of his and introduced me as Chef sommelier. It was a) terrifying and b) flattering and c) very interesting to watch the look on Alexis's face that I was getting specific attention when he was just the server in the background. But that's the way it is. I paid my dues. More than my fair share if you count the shit I went through at Rabanel. I'm also there 14 hours a day while he rolls in at 11:30, leaves at 3pm and doesn't come back until the dinner service. Basically all he does is the service. You want the credit? Do the dirty work. Anyway... My apartment smells of cigarette smoke. I think that if I don't go home next weekend, I'll have to give it a thorough cleaning. Order some activated carbon and scrub the walls. I don't smoke inside the apartment, I hang rather far out the window, but nonetheless, cigarette smoke has leeched it's way in. And thats all. Work. Weekend. Work. Work work work. I wish I had a life outside of work. |
| When I left off, I was on the train on my way to Arles, blathering on about work and wine and probably barely coherent. Since then I've arrived home, showered, lunched, and slept a few hours. In that order. I'm still exhausted but for the moment, I've had an extra four hours of sleep, which makes me slightly more functional. Not much, but slightly. The cats are well. They are cats. It's the Feria here in Arles which is a traditional four day town-wide drunken orgy involving bullfighting. As we live in the historic center of town (the part that's a UNESCO World Heritage site) and close to the Roman amphitheater, we get a lot of crazy foot traffic and clearly hear the cannons go off during the bullfighting. There are two a day and tonight I'm pretty sure are the fireworks. So even though the cats are fine, they like to be dramatic and pretend this town-wide craziness that happens twice a year is totally new to them. In case you're wondering, the canons are fired when the bull is dead and the toreador is proclaimed victor. Since it's very rare for the bull to be left alive, the canons always go off. You'd be surprised, unless you live in a place that had a long bullfighting tradition, but it's still a big thing with crazy fans. Every year people flock to the amphitheater here in Arles for the bullfights from literally all over. And it's not random curious spectators who don't know what they're in for. It's regulars who actually know the sport, the toreadors, the statistics, the style, etc. When I used to work for Rabanel the Feria was obviously our biggest weekend. People always came to eat right after the bullfight was done (so the canons also told every restaurant in Arles to get ready for service) and they would always tell me about it as if they had just come from a football match. This toreador had style, the other was more classical, this bull put up a great fight (no joke), the other was slow. We even had regulars who booked with us months in advance every year. They had just come from the slaughter of innocent animals - because usually the bullfight encompasses two or three fights - and then tucked into bull stew. And people say Rome is dead. Anyway, the husband and I are not going out. We won't leave the house until it's over. There are just too many people in Arles' tiny streets and most of them are drunk. And I have no fond memories of the Feria when I used to live and work here. We talked a bit. He told me about some studies he read about cats and the history of science (two different subjects) and I talked about work. I'm not feeling all that great, but I'm pretty sure that's from all the smoking and from "sleeping" with my windows open last night. So I'm not smoking today or tomorrow and we'll see what happens when I get back to Lyon. I tend to be fine on the weekends. The past three I've been able to avoid smoking with little difficulty, but as soon as work starts again, I can't help myself. I'd like to work out or work, but I don't have the energy. It's alright. This is the first time I've been back in over a month and I need to get used to it again. At least it's easy to come home now, just one train ride instead of two trains, a taxi, and a bus and I'll get used to it and be more functional. Plus as work gets easier, I'm less exhausted. Kind of. Tonight the husband is making Mexican and vodka martinis. I'll probably be out after the first martini. |
| I'm on the train, going home to visit my husband and the cats for the first time since I started my new job. Saturday nights when we close, we finish around 3am and I don't usually get into bed until 4am. I woke up at 6 to catch the 7am train – I slept in my clothes with the window open in order to do it – and one of the SNCF operatives just yelled at me for sleeping with my feet on the seat. I kind of want to tell her that when she works a 16 hour day then she can tell me not to put my feet up, but I have a friend who works in the upper echelons of SNCF and I know what the train operatives are doing when they're in between stops (they sit around and play on their phones) and they never work more than 7 hours at a day. So there. Feet up. For a while I put my bag on the seat and then put my feet on the bag. Technically, my feet are not on the seat that way. Anyway, it's been 5 weeks now at my job. Three more weeks to go and my trial period will have ended, which means I won't be easily fire-able anymore. This past week has been better, but that first month was rough. I mean really rough. The hours, the responsibility, the stress, the amount of work I have to do. On Tuesday if I make it back to Lyon (which I might not because SNCF is going on strike again) I have to do the monthly inventory. This is normal for every restaurant, but now it's me that actually has to deal with all of the paperwork surrounding the inventory. Before all I had to do was just count bottles and write down how many of each wine we had in it's proper column. This time I have to update the inventory, find/make a record of where we were last month, put together all the orders I made during March, and deal with all the budget/financial side of it. On top of that I have two directors of wineries coming by to introduce themselves and a whole lot of new wine arriving as I organized my orders to arrive next week so the bills would appear on the April inventory and not March. All very boring, yet interesting and so much work. What's amazing is the amount of attention I'm getting from wineries and suppliers. When Gaël left the restaurant, he passed to me all his contacts and said that he had called his suppliers (most of whom he's known for a while) and told them I was taking over. So when I went to place my orders they were all eager to meet me. A few came by this week and as I said, I have more coming next week. I need to be on my best behaivor because a) these are my suppliers b) it will reflect badly on Gaël if the person he trained (me) comes off as a bitch c) the suppliers always know all the gossip at all the restaurants. If they like me, I can drop a hint that I'm looking for a job and they will be able to find me one later on. I'm not on my way out the door already, but I don't think I'll stay here forever. It's kind of crazy to think that in just 5 years I've gone from commis de salle (the lowest you can go) to « chef » sommelier. I don't actually have the title, since my official title is assistant maître d'hôtel but I am in essence the head sommelier. As I'm writing this I opened Gmail to check something and saw an email from a supplier that I totally missed and is really urgent. So though I promised myself I wouldn't work until after lunch... Anyway, I'm kind of tired and this entry is rambling. Two hours of sleep will do that to a person. |
| Do you ever have one of those days when you wake up feeling powerful and sexy and confident and then, by the time you've eaten your lunchtime tuna salad you just want to wash all the make up off and crawl into bed and never emerge again? That's today for me. So I took a two hour nap and then forced myself to roll out of bed, put my clothes back on, redo my makeup and make coffee and now I'm sitting here trying to convince myself to work. In reality, "Convince Myself to Work" should be the title of this blog and the title of my autobiography since that is what I spend most of my time doing. I don't even want to do other things, like read or play a computer game. I just want to lay in bed and stare at the ceiling and dream, either awake or asleep. I had a horrible nightmare last night, about 1 hour into falling asleep. I read somewhere that dreams that seem to take hours really only take a few minutes, but this one really felt like it took hours. And even when I realized, in dream, that I was having a nightmare, I kept trying to wake up. In fact, I did half wake up, but it was one of those horror-movie moments when you realize you're still dreaming and can't actually escape from the dream. I'm pretty sure I spent at least 20 minutes fighting to open my eyes and officially waken. When I did finally sit up and turn on the light, my heart was pounding so hard that had any pain or shortness of breathe come with it, I'm sure I would have been having a heart attack. It turned into an anxiety attack anyway, which is just as much fun, if not life-threatening, and it took me a while to fall back asleep. Even though I could hardly keep my eyes open, I was afraid of falling back asleep with my heart still pounding because I figured either a) I would have a heart attack in my sleep or b) I would just have another nightmare. It took a while for it to calm down and when it did finally stop pounding, it was so sudden that THAT actually scared me. Current score count: Mortality: 3,056,478 Holly: 0 Or maybe it's the other way around because I am, you know, still alive. (For now, says Mortality) I don't like to talk about it, because I think it's stupid, but I'm terrified of dying. I mean terrified. The whole concept, despite being completely natural and normal, makes me so angry and I find it so unfair that it either makes me want to scream and break things like a child, or have an anxiety attack because I can't do anything about it. A therapist once said it might help if I had some sort of spiritual belief in an afterlife or a higher deity, but the fact is I'm such an agnostic that I can't physically, mentally believe in an afterlife. Sure, it's a great concept. It would be really cool, if it was true, but the fact is that we just don't know. In the past twenty years we have mapped the brain when we pray and meditate, we have hypothetically found the "God particle," there was even a paper published recently in some magazine (Times or New Yorker or JAMA) that actually showed what exactly happens as our bodies die and how our brain registers the event, and we've come no closer to answering the questions of what happens after we die and if there is a god. If anything we've only raised more questions and opened more possibilities. Which, in all fairness is probably a good thing, because if we could answer the questions of the metaphysical with a yay or a nay there'd be so much more chaos in the world, I can't even imagine. So for now, this life is it for me. And its already 36 years over. And that's 2 more years than my father got to have. Did this entry take a dark turn or what? No wonder I can't get any work done today. I'm supposed to go out with my coworkers tonight to a wine bar I suggested and before that, meet the co-worker who suggested the dinner at the commercial center. I need to buy some stuff for work and more hair goo. Work is a disaster. I feel like I can't keep up. I feel like a failure. Like I'm doing everything wrong. I keep making huge mistakes. I know there is a learning curve to be had. And a pretty huge one for me. I went from sommelier at a super fancy fine dining restaurant (45 covers a service max) where all I had to do was serve wine to Assistant Manager / Head Sommelier of a bistrot (150 covers a service) where I'm responsible for everything. Ok, that's a bit of an exaggeration, but except for wine, everything else about my job has changed. And I don't know if I can keep up. I already told Greg that while the job pleases me, I don't know if I'll be asked to stay on when my trial period is over. I hope so because being fired would be a major failure, but I'm not ruling out the possibility. This Saturday, after making another major mistake, I just gave up at around 11:30pm (there were still two more hours of service left). I didn't have it in me anymore to try. I was tired, and so so frustrated and angry at myself. And all I can think of is how it's just going to be more mistakes this week. I don't like to think that I'm sabotaging myself, and I don't want to do that, but there it is. Also, after everything that happened at Rabanel, being back in a bistrot has been a huge trigger for me. All I can think of is Corentin's constant abuse and the insanity of the chef and how everyone turned a blind eye to what was happening. My maitre d'hotel is nothing like Corentin, the chef is nothing like Rabanel. The team is actually competent. And they are all very nice (except for the chef patissier, but she clearly has her own issues) But all I hear in my head is "tu es une merde." |
| It's a beautiful day here in Lyon. It's sunny and bright and fucking freezing. I woke up at 6am all set to drink my coffee and then head out for a quick run before work. That fell through. It's so cold out, that my apartment is cold and my coffee was glacial within 5 minutes. It's so cold out that I can't run. At least not in the early morning hours. In the shower, preparing for work, I decided that I would try to run this afternoon. I figured if I had a full two-hour break, I had just enough time for a 45 minute run home, a shower, makeup, and the metro ride back to work. Perfect. I planned out everything I would need to bring with me, what I'd need for the run, the metro ride back, and if I could fit everything in my backpack, as well as how I would get back to work without freezing, then I remembered - I'd have to leave my jacket at work. I only have the one. I'd have to go back to work without a jacket. Now granted, I'd be running home without a jacket, but exercise without a jacket is way different than walking to the subway without one. In all reality, it might be possible, if I have enough layers underneath my running jacket, which I could wear back on the metro, but I'm not sure if I want to risk getting sick. I mean, it's -8°C outside with a windchill of -15°C. This afternoon it's supposed to be -1°C with a windchill of -6°. That's cold. And I already have enough problems with my health between still fighting off a cold and my circulation. But I don't want to give up running. I know I do a very physical job and no one would blame me for only running one or two days a week, but I don't want to be a weekend runner. I love running before work, or at least before the dinner shift. It wakes me up, it clears out my mind, it loosens my muscles. It's all good things. And it's something I do that isn't work or work-related. I need that to survive mentally. Supposedly it's going to warm up later in the week and hopefully stay that way. This is just a passing thing. And next year, I should have the money to get a gym membership. So I don't know what I'll do today. Or tomorrow. Or the rest of the week. Smoke and lament I guess. |
| Well holy crap, I got my Yellow case/ Preferred Author status back. This was quite a surprise this afternoon, when, after taking a nap and managing to go shopping, clean my apartment, and make lunch (all actual feats, which I will explain) I checked my W.com email and discovered I had 17 emails. What the hell happened this past week? I thought to myself. That happened. That's quite an honor because, honestly, I wasn't expecting to ever have it back and while I wasn't terribly concerned, it did make me sad. I'm pleased and it's a reminder that I need to keep writing, because it is what I love, despite my long long long work hours. And now I have a lot of congratulations emails to respond to. But first things first. I will write this blog entry to wake me up, then go running, then shower, then respond to emails. I know 4:45pm seems like a lazy time to be starting the day, but I went to bed no later than 2am every night this week and last night it was a whopping 4am. I didn't leave work until 3am, but to be honest there was an hour of end of the week drinks involved. This week I've worked a total of 74 hours and I have a ton of work to do tonight and tomorrow to prepare me for the next week. My new job is interesting, not in a "well, that was interesting" sarcastic kind of a way, but interesting in a positive way. It's way different from any sommellerie I've done before in that I spend most of my time managing and the rest of it serving food. I no longer spend all my time chasing after clients, re-pouring water and wine every time they take a sip from their glass (yes, I used to work in those types of restaurants). Now I open the bottle, put it on the table and walk away and pick it up again, only once it's empty. Not that that doesn't mean I have nothing to do. The wine cellar and wine list and whole beverage organization are just catastrophic. I mean, CATASTROPHIC. This isn't the fault of my superior/Maître d'hôtel, JY who could definitely have a handle on things if he had the time. It's just never been taken care of properly. I'm not even quite sure how they ran things before JY got here and started to organize things, but I can guess. The wine cellar was probably just full of cartons and the wines were treated like soft drinks. Ordered en masse, dumped in the cellar and no thought given to proper storage, vintage, region or how to sell them. There's just a lot of crap down there and I don't even know how to handle it during work hours. I don't know if I'll have the time and it's more than likely that I'm going to have to get permission to come in on a weekend to deal with it. Every time I've gone down to the cellar this week I just start swearing and screaming because it's not organized correctly and the stock is out of control. And there's crap everywhere. Luckily, the cellar is all thick, local, old medieval era stone, and is 30 feet underground so no one can hear me. So that's the first step. Dealing with that. And it's why I haven't done anything of major significance today. I'm tired. My god, I'm tired. I didn't think it was possible to be this tired. I'd forgotten what restaurant-management-position hours were like. On the upside, during my 90 minute break yesterday (a day that started at 9:30 and went until 2am) I found the most AMAZING coffee shop with the best chai I've ever had. A little on the expensive side, but SO worth it. I also found a nice caviste (wine shop). The wines themselves are rather "eh" meaning I didn't see anything of great interest that makes me want to buy a case, but the owner was nice and the prices correct. The one closest to work is much more interesting but it's expensive and the guy's an ass. Of course, I have to be nice to him, because when I went in there last week we discussed me possibly taking some of his wine for the restaurant on allocation. Which means I can put them on the wine list and sell them, but don't actually have to pay for them unless they do get sold. And if they don't I can return them. That could be interesting for some of the more expensive wines the Chef wants me to have. So much to do. So little weekend. Time to run. |
| Oh, you mean I have to work? A list of what has happened in the past 10 days: I moved to Lyon. I spent a lot of money. My scooter arrived. Work starts Tuesday. I'm pretending that it's not going to happen by playing computer games in my tiny apartment. Actually, yesterday and Friday I was fairly productive, despite feeling like crap. Between the stress of moving and lugging my luggage and shopping up 5 flights of stairs (elevator...hahahahaha what's that?) my legs and back are really sore. When I ran yesterday it was probably one of the most painful runs of my life. And yet, I'm planning to go again in an hour or so. Even though I think I'm coming down with a cold, which is most likely my own fault because in all the stress I bought a pack of cigarettes. I haven't smoked since Friday night, but I'm sure it did it's job. My throat hurts, my nose is stuffed. It's cold in Lyon and my apartment is hot. I'm keeping the heat up higher than normal people because my hands turned blue and then white - like dead person white - yesterday. Partially my fault for not wearing gloves when running. I don't know why I always think that's an ok thing to do with my circulation problems. I really need to get it checked out by a doctor but I'm pretty sure it's just a circulation problem and I just need to manage it. That's a convoluted summary of the last three days. I went by the restaurant to say hey to everyone, talked to JY for a bit (the maître d'hôtel) and then went home to eat dinner and play computer games. Which continued up until now with a 5 hour sleep interval. My tiny apartment is pretty nice. I set it up nicely and even found a cheap pillow in the EXACT color I wanted for my bed. Since it's a tiny tiny studio, the bed serves as bed and couch. For a lot of people this would be a bad thing, but I've learned how to work around it. I make the bed every morning and I have 7 pillows that I pile on to the bed to make it into a couch and never sit or lay down where my head would be, unless I'm planning on sleeping. It helps. I need to get another pillow or two to make it complete but as it is now, it's functional. I'm trying to keep the place as clean as possible until I start work, because I know once I begin, all bets are off. I don't have electricity however. Or rather I do, but I'm not paying for it. Because the apartments are all new (though the building is not) we have to set up our electricity with the company. To do this, when the electrician comes to install the counter, he gives you a number called a Point de Livraison or PDL (delivery point number) that you give to the electric company. However, whoever set up the counters for this building, just decided to NOT give the PDL to anyone. Who knows why, but we can't have an account with electricity company without it. I've talked to a few other people in the building and they're all the same. The guy just decided not to do his job properly and so basically we're all living with free electricity until someone discovers that there is a whole building full of people not paying any bills. We're all fine with this. Technically, it's not our fault. The electric company didn't do it's job. My husband and I had the same problem a few years ago with another apartment and I talked to him about it and he told me not to worry about it until they had completed the work in the building because that would probably be when the electric company would get on us about it. Setting up the account costs 45 Euros. My monthly electricity estimate is 30 euros. I have 0 Euros in my checking account atm. (Actually I have negative 80, but I don't want to think about that) I'd rather wait to get paid a month or two before having to pay 75 Euros. |
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I think it's awesome that you're using that negative experience to get creative. It's hard not to just wallow when those things happen. I use a paper journal for most of my actual coping process too, but I do share bits and pieces on WDC as well.
Might try a short story a day instead. Stay safe. 
