Time passes too quickly here in Paris! In college a month was a mini eternity, but here a good chunk of my time here is over. I’m not going to calculate the actual percentage of time that has already elapsed because that will only make me sad. I wake up at ten because if I wake up any earlier I’m throwing away an opportunity to sleep in. After the all nighters and days started at five am demanded by school and traveling on a tight budget, I appreciate a morning spent in bed. I wish I were one of those I’ll-sleep-when-I’m-dead kind of people but if I don’t set an alarm I can literally sleep for twelve consecutive hours. I’m not proud of this.

But then again there really isn’t much of a reason to wake up before ten. By the time I get my day started I’ve missed morning rush hour (perhaps the most miserable thing about city living), stores and libraries and cafés are just opening and the sun is out if it’s coming out at all. Don’t you hate it when you wake up early and it’s cold so then you bundle up and then by noon you’re dressed too warmly and have to carry some stupid jacket with you everywhere or just suck it up and be hot and tired too because you woke up too early? I do, but at least for the rest of this month that doesn’t have to happen.

Then I have to go grocery shopping pretty much every day-“marketing” as my grandmother calls it-because I refuse to schlep around twenty pounds of groceries once a week Albany style. Navigating the giant grocery store closest to our apartment is surprisingly time consuming, I think because I have a hard time accepting that such an enormous store doesn’t have, for example molasses, and I’ll do a thorough search of every single aisle before giving up, going home to put the groceries away and then searching some Asian market/health food store for the missing ingredients.

By this point it is usually mid afternoon, and if I don’t have a rendez-vous with friends I try and sit in a park or library and write. Except that my writer’s block in pretty bad. This stresses me out because if I can’t write now that I’m out of excuses: I’m well rested and warm a virtually free of all other responsibilities then when am I ever going to finish these novels? And then stresses make my writer’s block worse. Stress makes everything worse; it’s all stress’s fault! By the time I’ve calmed myself down it’s time to meet Ader at home and the days is basically over. Sigh.