Why you won't be seeing any pictures of my trip to Paris

Today, as I was perusing the menu at Les Deux Magots, in the St. Germaine-des-Pres neighborhood of the chi-chi Left Bank, some shithead came along and stole my purse. The black one that you can see on my bed in the picture just below.

In the purse (thank goodness, a cheapie from Target) there was:

my wallet (not cheap) with 150 Euros (and about 50 dollars, too)
my driver's license
about four credit cards
all those stupid cards you use at the grocery store, health club, etc.
my check book
my prescription sunglasses
my favorite lipstick case with my favorite lipstick
my camera with about 60 photographs of Paris, including cute ones of my kids posing in front of the promotional signs for the new Simpsons movie

and

MY FUCKING PASSPORT.

It's Saturday. So I won't be able to do anything about getting a new passport until Monday. So I probably won't be able to go back to Chicago until Tuesday.

And no, I didn't do this on purpose.

Packing

I'm packing. Not just my clothes, of course, but my children's, too.

And then I thought--hey, people are going to expect pictures. (They won't get them, but they'll expect them.) So I'd better, you know, charge the camera. And try to remember how it works. And upload all the pictures that are already on the memory card so I don't get to Paris only to discover that the memory is full.

So. Here.

And I'll just say this really fast and then go away for a week: I found a ton of pictures from Spring Break that I had totally forgotten about. So don't expect to be seeing shots of Paris any time soon.

Back to packing. Bye!

Don't hate me because I'm spoiled rotten.

Cue Alice Cooper: tomorrow is the last day of school.

In the afternoon we're going to Paris.

Shake it

Yesterday, in my ongoing quest for some relaxing down time, we went out for Thai food.

It was delicious. See how cleaned the plates are?

Also, notice the green stuff my husband was drinking? That's green tea bubble tea. He had never heard of bubble tea, so I explained the concept ("It's like drinking and eating at the same time!") and because this restaurant doesn't have a liquor license, he ordered it.

He actually did a pretty good job with it.

I ordered the mango version. Not very tea-like, and I was expecting tapioca that looked like tapioca, not dark, scary-looking, very bland berries.

And somehow I'll bet it was fattening. Way more fattening than "tea" is supposed to be.

Which brings me to today's rant. Have you noticed America's milkshake mania? Come on, restaurant owners, what's with the frappucinos and blizzards and smoothies and this mango bubble "tea" concoction--does everything have to be a milkshake? Big fattening creamy shakey drinks are everywhere these days. I'm waiting for someone to invent the Lemon Drop Martini Smoothie.

Dear dead Diana Vreeland would no doubt label the current zeitgeist a "Shake Quake!" And she, God bless her, would have the common sense to steer well away from it. The goddamned things probably contain 800 calories a teaspoon. Plus there's just no way they have enough caffeine.

Watch out, world.

I need down time. And I'm not getting it.

1. There are cicadas all over the place, making a whining sound like the sound flying saucers make in cheesey 1950s science fiction movies.

2. I've been on the phone a lot lately. Including my cell phone, and astute readers with long memories will remember what I think about them.

3. My kids don't have school today. Why? Because it's time to fill out their report cards "Teacher Institute Day."

4. My daughter apparently wants to spend all her free time skipping back and forth in her nightgown making up stories, and resents the fact that I won't let her spend her entire summer doing so, but instead do cruel things like sign her up for six weeks of summer camp. Oh, and take her to Paris.

5. My son apparently wants to spend all his free time playing Nintendo games in his pajamas, but at least he appears OK about the summer camp. And Paris.

6. My husband puttered around the house today until 11:30 while I cleaned the kitchen and did laundry. Then he wondered whether I could drive him to the train station while I was on the way to the gym. And then decided he would take the 12:45 train. Thus breaking his all-time record for getting in my way on a work day.

7. When I got to the gym, my trainer was there and sheepishly informed me that he had to cancel our session, and that he had tried to call me, but my answering machine was full, probably due to number 2.

Decisions, decisions. Whom should I murder first? My first thought was my husband, but I think I should check his will before I do anything drastic.

I wasn't blogging because I was too busy wasting time on the internet, OK?

The past couple of days have been pretty quiet around here, and it isn't because I didn't have access to the internet. (Well, OK, on Sunday I was either going to church, in church, or coming home from church for an eleven hour stretch, so I couldn't post, but don't worry, internet, because I was praying for you--in particular that you would see fit, in your infinite mercy, to leave me lots of comments.)

Wow, that was a long digression. I'll start again.

Hello, internet, and welcome to a side of Poppy you haven't seen before: the side that gets totally sucked into internet user group dramas.

A friend of mine owns a Yahoo group, and things got ugly for a few days there, and I was pretty much glued to my laptop for hours at a time keeping up with things and weighing in from time to time with what I hoped was sage advice.

Because, you know, been there/done that.

You know, sometimes I think people get fooled by the slick hardware and software they're using. You know, here I am with a completely beautiful 17-inch laptop, running all kinds of excellent software, able to check the weather, listen to music, IM my pals, look at people's pictures, blog, email, update a spreadsheet, and write the long-overdue letter to my mother (who lives in a cave, eats mastodon for dinner, and expects me to write her letters--and no, a phone call won't do. )

Surrounded, as I said, with all this slick software and hardware, which, when it works, works amazingly well, it's easy to forget that the people on the other side of the screen are human beings. Who are imperfect. Maybe they have morning breath, maybe they're catching a cold, and maybe they don't read with the kind of attention our elegant, eloquent writing deserves.

And yet, we keep writing.

Now that I have your attention, let me take you away from the internet and bring you to church with me. I'd like you to meet the choir, which is mostly made of professional musicians. I've learned a lot from them, and in turn, I have taught them to be patient with well-meaning amateurs like me.

So anyway, this is one thing I've learned from the pros: in a studio, an artist like Barbra Streisand will record 16 versions of the same song and polish and perfect until it's just right. But in real life, when you perform for a living, you do the best you can, and then you move on. When a performance is over, you don't perform endless post-mortems on it; you get ready for the next gig. You get better not by working on a single song and making it perfect, but by performing lots of music many times. In front of a live audience. Which may or may not appreciate your talent.

Which is a long-winded way of saying that even in a written medium with a long, long archival memory, this too will pass. The moving finger writes, and having written, forgets what the hell it was saying.

And now, excuse me. I need to go check my email. Maybe something else has happened.

My Popeyes Try Mock Tais for Size

My husband's latest contribution to The Encyclopedia of Cocktails is a drink he calls the "Mock Tai." This is how to make one:

In a double old fashioned glass full of ice, put

Two heaping teaspoons of simple syrup
The juice of half a lemon
Then, almost fill a glass with rum, leaving room for
A splash of sparkling water. Oh, and a lemon slice.

Drink to forget the EXTREME BODILY PAIN of having cleaned house for four straight hours.

My Popeye arms are not happy. They are still sore from the Personal Trainer. They did not want to do a lot of heavy lifting, not to mention heavy dusting and heavy vacuuming.

MY ARMS LIKE RUM.