Could I be any happier? Maybe, but not much.

Okay, Kiwi Fresh'ins should pay me for how much I am going to talk up their shoe inserts right now.

In Paris I bought a similar product--a disposable shoe liner--to wear in all my ballet flats that I didn't want to wear socks with.

I have wanted to buy them ever since I've come home, but never found them in the US. Well, today I found them online at Kiwi for Women!!

Seriously, if you like to wear shoes without socks, and you hate the tiny footie socks (since they fall off half the time anyway), you should get some. Find them here: Kiwi Fresh'ins (a.k.a. every girl's lifesaver). They are only $3.99 for a six-pair pack.

I haven't tried this particular brand before, but I think they would have to be seriously unfortunate to disappoint me.

Hooray! (And you're welcome in advance.)

Last Week I Helped an Old Man and His Wife

They were bringing a 20-year car out of winter storage and the battery had died, so he was using a mid-size SUV to tow the car with her behind the wheel.

Well, no power steering + aging muscles and joints = difficulty making the car turn sharply enough to make corners.

As I drove down the street I take to get home from work one night, their towing difficulties were causing a slight (okay, total) roadblock. There was no way they were going to make the turn through the intersection without making it a 3-point turn.

Which I assumed meant they needed some help backing the car up so they could complete the remaining 2 points of their turn. So...

1) I pull over and hopped out to see if they needed a quick push backward.
2) The husband says his wife was just having trouble getting the wheel turned enough without the power steering available.
3) I, thinking "Yay! I'm helping old people!" jump into the driver's seat and give the wheel a good crank or two until the car is straightened out in the road. I prepare to stop at any moment and hop back into my own car.
4) The old man keeps driving down the road.
5) I start to panic because--thinking I would only be needed for about 30 seconds total--I not only left my car unlocked, but running. With my purse inside.
6) I watch anxiously in the rearview mirror, just knowing that some 14-year old kid is going to come steal my car.
7) The old man stops, gets out of his car, and explains how we wants to maneuver getting the car into their carport. He is not in fact taking me to the nearest mechanic and leaving his wife to fend for herself as I feared, but is simply towing the deadmobile to their house which is only another few doors down the road.
8) I can't relax until I am back to my car and can confirm that, yes, it is exactly where I left it and yes, I am able to get back in it without calling a locksmith.

True story.

Seen in My Backyard...

...a few days ago.

Nice, right? There were two additional deer to the right a little more, but they were hidden from the camera by a little tree in the backyard.

They just sat there and chilled for an hour or so.

Fugliness

So, my best friend has a supremely unflattering picture of me as her profile picture on Facebook. (Well, she's in it, too. But still. SHE looks cute.)

Yep.

That's all.

If it's there come Monday, we might not be friends anymore.

(Kidding.)


(Kind of.)

Test Kitchen/Dinner Group

To help me resolve my little recipe problem, I decided to start a weekly dinner group/test kitchen combo.

Basically, I'm going to make at least one recipe from my (ahem) archives each Thursday and invite all of my Orem/Provo peeps for dinner every week.

I was thinking I would send out a weekly email with the plan for the main dish, a side-dish sign-up list with a couple of slots, and then let everyone else know to bring $3-$8 to help pay for ingredients, depending on how exotique the ingredients are. (So... if it's lobster, everyone brings $8-ish. If it's tortilla soup everyone brings $3.)

What do you think? Is it tacky to ask people to bring money? Should I just have them bring ingredients? If it were you, what would you prefer?

Would you participate in something like this if someone else was hosting?

L'embarras du choix

At a ward activity with my church in Paris, there was a potluck with some of the most delicious-looking foods I've ever seen.

As I stood before the buffet-style setup trying to decide where to start, a member of the bishopric came up beside me with the same "Where do I start?" look of hesitation on his face.

"Ahh..." he says, "L'embarras du choix." Roughly translated, that conveys the idea of "overwhelmed by my options" or "spoilt for choice."

And that's the perfect description of my life right now. Really, where do I start?

I've been thinking a lot about graduate school, but for the life of me I can't settle on one program over another. It's kind of distressing, mostly because the deadlines are all coming up soon, and I'll need to get cracking on the GRE for some of the applications.

I feel pulled in several different directions. These are the programs I'm thinking of applying to:

-French studies
-French Teaching
-Language Acquisition
-TESOL
-MPA
-Literacy Education

If I did either of the last two, I would want to do both and end up working for a non-profit with a focus on literacy education (either K-12 or adult ed). But I also feel like I should work in that field for at least a year or two to determine whether that's something I would want to do as a full-time career.

I think with French Studies or French Teaching it's almost a no-brainer that I at least apply, but the catch with that is I don't think I would want to teach secondary, so I would have to also do a doctorate. Yowza. I'm 28. You do the math.

They're all sort of related, having to do with literacy, teaching, and language... but they're all different enough that they don't really overlap. Except maybe Language Acquisition and TESOL. Those probably have some significant overlap in the theories I would study.

So, I'm not gonna lie... I think I would love them all. I'm not really making salary a part of the decision, because choosing a career based on how much I would make is a recipe for disaster (based on previous experience).

That's all. Just needed to get it off my chest.

More Earrings

In the past couple of months I've started making earrings. Sometimes I make something because I can't find what I want in stores, and sometimes it's just a matter of wanting to do something creative that is also practical. It's also a cheaper way to feed my addiction.

Getting to the point: I gave earrings to all the girls in my family, as well as my friends, for Christmas.

Here are some of the earrings I've made in the past little while:

Hope you like them!

Many of you already know...

... that I'm a bit obsessed with earrings.

Well, a week or so ago I counted my earrings, just out of curiosity. I discovered that I had over 175 pairs on my earring storage/display racks, and if I'm going to be honest, I tend to wear the same 20 or 30 pair over and over, if that.

So--shallow as it may seem--I decided that I would challenge myself to wear every single pair of earrings I own once before I can wear any of them a second time. I'm also not allowing myself to wear any newly-purchased earrings until I've gone through the existing stash.

Some of you may care, some of you may not. But I started a blog about it so I wouldn't end up posting them all here. It's called the Earring Appreciation Project, and it's all about earrings: the ones I own and wear, the ones I wish I could afford but can't, and the ones I discover in different places (on people, online... wherever).

If you're interested, hop over and take a look. If you're not interested, feel free to mock me. (I'll only be somewhat offended.)

I've been home

from Paris for as long as I was there. It seems like it was a really long time ago and it's so far removed from my daily life now.

So... I'm getting ready to post about some of the things I've done since I've been home. Some you've already seen. Others... not so much.

Later.

Music at Place de la Chatelet

While I was waiting for a friend at the Chatelet metro stop, this was going on near the fountain.

This kind of stuff is one of the best things about living in a big city.

Drinking Fountains in Paris

In Paris you will rarely find a regular drinking fountain. The one pictured below is on the Place St. Michel, about where the Metro symbol (M) is on the map below.

But of course, there are always these fountains if you've alread got a bottle handy.

Traveling Man

While on vacation, we brought along a little friend, and sent back pictures for an elementary school class.

Anyone recognize this little guy?

(Ummm, not the statue. The paper dude.)

Dear Arizona:

Thanks for sharing your monsoon season with us. You can take it back now.

Sincerely,

Sarah

Name That Blog

So, I think I should probably change my blog name and my header picture. Sad.

If only I knew what I was going to do with my life at this point, that might help the whole situation. Unfortunately, my future is wide open and I have no idea which direction to go. Remember how I'm 28? Yeah.

Oh, and did you hear about how I started to cry yesterday during church because I miss Paris, going to church in French, cheese, bread, public parks (not that there aren't any here, but still...), public transportation (gasp!), and all of my wonderful friends there?

I have problems. (Not to worry, though, it wasn't like anyone saw or heard me--it was during the closing prayer. Just a little bit of "homesickness." If you can even BE homesick for somewhere you only lived for 5 months.)

There is a word in French that I can't find a good translation for in English, but it sums up perfectly how I feel: dépaysée. The closest translation I can come up with is "uprooted" or "a fish out of water" but the root of this word is pays, which means "country". Then you tack the "de-" on the front and the "-ée" on the back, and you've got "un-country-ed." I feel like a person without a country. Not to the extreme, really. But I feel like I don't really belong where I am, and I didn't really belong in France either.

I'm a wierd sort of Franco-American cultural mutt. Heaven help me.

Weekend Warrior

This weekend I don't have any plans, which means I've got a TON of plans. (Read: I don't have plans with friends, but I do have a mile-long to-do list that I'm hoping to make a major dent in.)

I am hoping to get the following things in:
-organize my room
-clean out my closet
-paint (of course!!)
-de-clutter my bathroom
-make a new jewelry holder (because... well... I came back from France with too many earrings. They won't all fit on the one I made a couple of years ago. I know. It's a problem.)
-finish turning the scrapbook room/library in my parents' basement into an art studio. (Wahoo!)
-ride my bike
-play tennis

Chilly

Today it's a bit chilly in Paris. Right now it's 52, with a likely high of 62 today. I just looked over the 10-day forecast, and it looks like we won't (fingers crossed) break 80 over the next week and a half.

Hooray! I won't melt, after all.

But today I'm bringing out a scarf, just in case.

I've Wanted One For a Long Time...

...and now I have one! Hooray!

I just bought a new suitcase. Not that exciting for you, I'm sure, but I am uber-happy.

It's an enormous, shiny 4-wheeled wonder. I got it in black, which wasn't my first choice, but they didn't have the grey finish, and my only other option was... raspberry/fuschia/dark pink (take your pick).





I've wanted one of this particular style for a while, because they are so much easier to maneuver. There are 4 wheels instead of two, and all of the wheels are fully rotational, so whichever way you steer the sitcase, that's exactly where it goes.



I know. It's not rocket science. But it is nice, because then you also don't have to 'tip' your suitcase to roll it alongside you. Just pull up the telescoping handle, and pull it right by your side, instead of trailing behind you.

This is the one I got. On sale, of course.

There. Was that infomercial-ish enough for you all?

On the Other Hand, Movies are a Different Story

And I want to know which ones you've seen since January that you liked.

Ready? Go.

(Do you guys go to the movies? I keep seeing ads for American movies here, and I don't want to see them dubbed in French--that just seems weird.)

Did anyone see the Wizard of Oz remake? Is that American? Or is it French and I'm just making things up now?

I Also Haven't

watched TV in about 3 months. I don't miss it.

(Though I'll admit that every once in a while I'll catch up on American Idol online. But I'm not going to lie... I don't really care who wins.)

Instead of getting trapped back in the habit of watching tv really often when I get home, I'm going to:

-take up tennis with my friend Angie
-take those painting, drawing and dance classes I've included as part of my 101 things in 1001 days
-study for the GRE
-spend time in public parks and in the mountains
-walk more places
-ride my bike more

Is it Weird

that I'm a little bit nervous to take up driving again when I get home?

I haven't driven a car for almost 4 months now...

But today I missed having one. I needed to get laundry detergent, but the grocery store on the corner didn't have any liquid detergent. (And I would have purchased powder--ick-- but I don't know if it would mess with my landlord's machine, so I didn't dare.) This means that I had to walk 10 minutes in the annoying overcastness that is covering Paris to the other grocery store for a $10 bottle of laundry detergent. (Which, by the way, only costs like $3.50 at home). This wouldn't normally bug me, but I have a cold, so I'm all irritable, sniffly and tired already. Walking all over my chilly neighborhood just so I can come home and do laundry wasn't my idea of a super fun evening.

"Oh, please. Cry me a river, why don't you?" you're thinking. I know. It's not the end of the world. All I'm saying is that it made me miss my car.

I still think I'm going to walk to the grocery store when I get home. Go, grocery chariot, go!