I’m as much of a fan of drunkenly howling Bon Jovi at karaoke bars as much of the next person, but there is extra significance.  Much like the boys from New Jersey, I am also almost half-way there.  Actually, I’m more than half-way there; yesterday was the midpoint of my excellent adventure (or bogus journey, some days).  Of course, I’m ambivalent; I’m sure I’ll be annoying everybody come February with tedious statements such as, “Well, in Bordeaux….” and the like.  Plus, there will be some marathon steel-cage grudge matches with my thesis.  And the snow.  Good lord, the snow.  And the sub-zero temperatures.  Wait a minute, I kind of want to go home why?

Ah yes, good friends.  And the fact that you cannot underestimate how much easier life can feel when you are operating in your native language and culture.  Just saying.  I also feel weirdly rootless here.  Maybe it isn’t weird; of course I would feel rootless here.

Although yesterday was a good day.  Not fantastic, but good.  Today is meh.  Of course, coming down with a cold is less than enchanting, no matter what setting or language.

No, actually, I have been incredibly ambivalent lately.  In the months (long, long months) leading up to coming here, it was all good.  It was the coolest thing in my life, the thing that made everyone say, “Oh wow, that’s incredible!”  (Well, except for my department cronies, since they were all headed off to francophone parts unknown.)  And sure, it was going to suck up a lot of money (which it has), and it had some blowback in my personal life (although that has historically been no great shakes anyway), but dude (and I use the term ironically, of course), I was going to France.  To live and work.  And eventually work on my thesis.  It was going to be, pardon my crude English, fucking awesome.

And it has been.

Except, you know, for the tedium of the fruitless trips to the Préfecture.  And shuffling around the bureau, looking for work to do (which can be a little ridiculous).  And having my American dollar not go very far.  And yet, I still seem to have maintained my ability to waste time and not work on my research for days, even though I now know actual Basque people who actually speak Basque, and even though Bordeaux has a Maison des Basques.

Because when I was typing “Maison des Basques,” I originally typed “Madison.”  Force of habit, of course.  But I do have one foot there, all the time.  I just need to remind myself that life in Madison has a boatload of annoyances too.  Yes, my American dollar is puny and weak here in France.  However, I hardly live high off the hog in Madison.  Some days at work, I barely have any students, and there are days that if I have to read yet another five paragraph cause and effect essay (often with the causes and effects all jumbled up), I will try to gouge out my own eyes with my lucky mechanical pencil.  And after October, Memorial Library can be really cold; not only that, I have to take a 45-minute bus ride just to get to the library.

Fortunately, I’m pretty good at remembering the shabby aspects of life as a grad student, freezing my ass off waiting for the 38 to take me to Van Hise.  So there’s that.  And I also had a good birthday, which doesn’t always happen (even if I will miss out on a rowdy Sunday brunch with my favorite broads – there will be other brunches).

However, there’s still the matter of my non-existent love life, which manages to suck bilingually.  Now that’s talent.

So the answer to the question ça va? is still ça va.  Which isn’t much of an answer.  Then again, it’s not much of a question, is it?

I could tell tales of Amiens (and I probably will, later), but right now I’m still exhausted.  I managed to have a successful trip to the Préfecture (hooray!), and got crap done for a change.  It’s back to work tomorrow after what can be best described as intense week.  I doubt I will have grande chose à faire before Thursday, when I start a translation project.  It will be hard to make the transition – I was always on the go last week, always involved in something.  Plus, since everyone was thrown together and trying to make something out of nothing, it seemed to act as a crucible and some fast friendships were formed (by me, but also by others – it was interesting to watch).  In Bordeaux, I sometimes get the feeling that I’m the only one trying to construct a life here (as opposed to developing an already existing one), and the dynamic requires me to work a lot harder than usual to meet people and make friends.  And, to tell the truth, after a day spent working in my second language, I find it difficult to summon the energy necessary.

Ah well, next month is Lyon, although that won’t be as long or difficult as Amiens.

But I can’t get over how quick I was on the uptake.  In fact, I’m almost ready to doubt the whole thing, just because I picked up on it.  I’m not saying I’m dumb, just…nerdlike.  Immersed in my own little world.  And true, part of my sense of self was forged from my head gear and bad perm era.  I’m actually pretty pleased with myself.  The validation is nice and everything, but mostly, I think I’m slick because I’ve finally developed the social skills of a 16 year old.  Woo hoo!

Actually, the laundry is a big thing, as I will be spending most of this next week out of town for work.  It remains to be seen what level of usefulness I will be, and the level of weirdness of spending practically 24/7 with a selection of my co-workers, but at the very least, I’ll have tales to tell.

Tonight, I went out and took pictures.  There’s this art/event doohickey going on, including this wooden bridge installation that has intrigued me since it went up a month ago.  Plus, tangentially related (though to me it is unclear the level of connection between the two events), is that there’s a carnival going on in the Place des Quinconces.  I have been itching to take my old school film camera out and take some grainy, available light shots of the carnival (’cause I’m like that).  Realizing that I’m leaving Tuesday, I grabbed my gear and hotfooted it to the carnival tonight.

Unlike my poor saps back in Wisconsin, I have been enjoying balmy weather; tonight it was in the mid-60s and with a light mist, I got some of my favorite weather.  Especially since France has some…er…stronger odors than we get back in Madison, the light mist offered a freshening up of the city.  Plus, there was a nice shininess on the streets, which may or may not show up, but I loved anyway.

Of course, there were people at the carnival, riding the (what I assume to be) shoddy rides, eating crappy food, trying to win lousy prizes.  I imagine some of them thought I was odd, with my old school camera and my old school light meter, taking pictures.  I don’t care; I was in heaven.  I might go back tomorrow night, though, and try to win a lousy prize.  It will be an unexpected souvenir, if I manage to fit it in my suitcase.

There is this bookstore in Bordeaux which is the stuff of legend.  It’s called Mollat, and to say it’s ginormous doesn’t begin to cover it.  But let’s start by saying it’s ginormous.  And that I have a nerdly love of books.  And that even living in a university town, it’s often hard to find a good, affordable selection of books in French.  So I’m a primed consumer every time I step into their store (which covers a city block, by the way).  I managed to only buy 4 books, which is something of a victory.  I bought a book of courtly poetry (with modern French translation), La Reine Margot, by Dumas, which is a good, fat book which will keep me occupied for at least a week, Entre les murs, the movie of which I still haven’t seen, but probably will, if not here, back in Madison, and Ni d’Eve ni d’Adam by Amélie Nothomb (which for those of you in my program, is the follow up to Stupeur et tremblements) and I will inform Erin what I think of it (online book club!).  Books have been my companions from such an early age that it seems only natural to turn to them at a time like this.

But mope I did not (to get Yoda on all y’all).  I hung out with the New Neighbor, first over some mojitos, then modified tapas and a bottle of wine.  And it was good.  But now it’s time to delve into a book and try to get a good night’s sleep.

There have been some points of interest:  I made a “friend date” with some people I met on the Internet.  We hit it off, and it’s nice to have some sort of social life.  Then, with the arrival of my new (fellow American) neighbor, I staggered out of my shell and got out and met more new people.  All very well and good.  In fact, with the exception of the cat pissing on my bath mat and the inevitable stepping in dog crap (seriously, Frenchies, how hard is it to get a baggie and pick up after your damn dog?), life’s been pretty chouette.

So of course, the other shoe must drop.

As far as shoes go, it could be so much worse.  And really, I feel silly (and oh, so typical) for this being the thing that brings me back to updating after nearly three weeks.  But there you have it, I’m a big whiner.  A big, predictable whiner.  So sue me.  And you can use this as Exhibit A.

As I believe I may have mentioned, I’ve been keeping in contact with the Not Boyfriend.  As has already been established, I totally own its Not Brilliant Idea-ness, so we can laissons tomber, if you please.  Things had been…if not satisfying, somewhat promising.  But I wasn’t keeping my hopes up.  We had no status, and it was pretty passive-aggressive, which is Not Healthy, and I have always suspected that, when it came right down to it, he was never going to have the attention span.  But I figured if I was Not Naive (see what I’m doing here?  yeah, Not Particularly Clever, I know), I could enjoy it for what it was.  Which was Not Much, but better than nothing.

About two weeks ago, I made a crack to him over IM that due to our different schedules and spotty Internet, sometimes IM wasn’t so very I, as it were, and to make it interesting, I should start sending obscene messages, which got a Not Negative response (I gathered he thought it was funny).  Last week, we were IMing again, and there seemed to be a lag, so I thought it would be funny (and possibly would have interesting secondary effects), if I sent him a dirty text.  To which I got no response.  Which didn’t necessarily mean anything, but it also could (mean something, that is).  So while I was not going to jump to conclusions, I was perfectly capable of knowing there might be handwriting on the wall.

The week passed by, rather quickly, due to a more active social life of recent vintage (not intentionally a pun, but feel free to interpret it as such).  Still, in the back of my mind, I wondered.  Had I pushed things too far?  Had I misinterpreted how the Not Boyfriend had felt about our Not Relationship?  The New Neighbor and I had dinner and wine and we were swapping stories, and even though what I had described sounded pretty good, it wasn’t the most recent information.  And, like the lawyer I once thought of being, I decided to ask the question I already had the answer to.  So I contacted him.  After some brief catching up, I asked him about his abrupt radio silence.  To which he responded that he had no response.  I had my answer; I felt it in the sudden increase in my stomach acid.  But I wanted the whole story.  To wit:  he has been seeing someone.  I said something uncharacteristically inarticulate, like “oh.”  He quietly expressed a hope that we could still be friends.  It might be possible, but just not now, and I said something very nearly like that.  I wished him luck and ended the conversation.

The thing is, he knew it was going to be doomed, which is why we were Not Seeing Each Other, although he clearly wasn’t above keeping his options open with me.  He certainly knew where I stood.  And while it would be momentarily tempting to rail against men and blah, blah, blah…I’m not an idiot.  I’ve known all along that I was being dangled, and I was okay with that to a certain extent.  But I knew that I was more invested than he was.  I don’t know for sure if it is because of my nature, or my feelings for him, or if it was a safety net, all the better to soothe my ego if no one here expressed an interest.  The most accurate and least satisfying answer is that it’s likely a little bit from each column.  It is my nature to go all in, even if I know it’s a bad idea.  I did (probably still do, but let’s allot me a little dignity here, if you don’t mind) have actual, real feelings for him, and I know, because I’ve been attracted to other men since I left, that I might have worried that they would be Not Interested.  So yeah, it’s likely that my defense mechanism would be, “well, I’m kind of involved with someone, so they all probably picked up on that.”

So there you have it.  I know everything, except how I really feel about this and what I’m going to do next.  But then again, I have never, in my 30 some-odd years on this planet, ever known that.

Merde, of course, is the MVP of French obscenity.  I’ve always been fond of it, myself.  However, this may be my ethnocentrism, but I really do prefer English obscenities.  Our go-to 4-letter words have a nice phonetic quality, starting  with a voiceless fricative (excellent for hissing) and ending with a voiceless plosive that can be exaggeratedly aspirated for a flourish.  (I’m still working out my feelings on the vowels.)  But I do like merde, which is convenient, since I’m also a known shit-flinger.

As would be expected, considering how much time I spend in a netherworld between the two languages, I mix and match obscenities.  However, a little incident brought something to light.  I was cleaning my kitchen and I splashed water on myself.  My knee-jerk commentary?  ”Merde!”  I cut myself on a broken glass?  ”Goddamn it!”  So, one might reasonably assume that the level of emotion determines language.  Close, but not quite:  when faced with some sort of annoyance out and about (French bureaucracy, missing a tram, etc.), my response, no matter what language I was thinking in before, seems to be uniformly, “You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me.”  Now obviously, in a world where trams run roughly every 10 minutes, I assure you I do not feel strongly one way or another about the situation (which is going to cause a rude awakening back in Madison, the first time I wish to catch a bus on a Sunday evening).  Food for thought.

Sweatpant weather is the type of weather where you just want to hunker down, maybe brew up a cup of tea, maybe read a book and listen to some mellow music.  It is also the type of weather that seems tailor made for hunkering down with someone.  And last night, during a sleepless patch, the Not Boyfriend and I skyped, which we had been trying to do, but failing at, for over a week.  Either his internet was down, or I was at the beach, or the 7-hour time difference stymied several attempts.  Every other day, either he’d get a message, or I would, and it would just be at the wrong time.  For whatever reason, it wasn’t a voice conversation (although part of that was that it was pretty late on my end), just messaging, which I have to say is less satisfying as a long-distance communication method.  There was nothing wrong with it, but now I’m experiencing kind of a letdown.  When we were struggling to get in touch with each other, it felt engaging in some way.  Now that we’ve communicated (and though it was nearly an hour, it was mostly a recap of what was going on in our lives – there’s much less conversational fluidity to a message chat, as opposed to an old school chat), that tension has dissipated, and realistically, it will likely be another week before we talk (or “talk”) again.

It’s funny, when he expressed his concern that the aftermath of my departure would be too painful (and so, in an interest of avoiding that, we shouldn’t “see each other” anymore), he used the word “void” to describe the sensation.  And you know, that little shit might be right.  At least, partly right.  Tonight, even though I’m not wearing sweatpants, I am hunkered down with a cup of tea, the Internet, and some jazz.  I’m enjoying a lot of songs, sung by a variety of legendary songstresses.  Many of these songs deal with a couple (and yes, I know, we’re not a real couple) separated by distance.  The woman singing (whether Billie, Ella, Peggy, Sarah, Nina or Lena, among others) expresses how she misses her man and can’t wait until he comes back to her.  Except here, now, it’s reversed.  I’m the one who’s away.  I’m the one who’s coming back (some day).  Which leads me to wonder why I’m the one who’s moping.  I’m the one in f#cking France.  I’m the one being checked out by smoldering Frenchmen.  Shouldn’t he be the one post-skype sulking?

Orangina Diablo:  Like many Americans who have spent a portion of their formative teen years in Europe, I like Nutella and Orangina (though not together).  Orangina Diablo is a reddish-orange, like a mixture of orange juice and Hi-C.  Presumably, it comes from having red grapefruit juice in it, but dude, you know that color came from a test tube, not from the grapefruit.  Still, it has a not insubstantial amount of fruit juice, and like all sweetened beverages on this side of the ocean, no high-fructose corn syrup, so I’d be seen drinking this in public.

Diet Coke, Blood Orange flavor:  When I saw this in the store, I was intrigued.  I like Diet Coke (though I shouldn’t, and I try to limit my consumption of it to not more than once a month), and I love blood oranges.  It did seem like a strange combination, but I figured, what the hell.  I got it home, opened it, and loved the smell.  My first glass, not so much.  I can’t put my finger on what was off (although it wasn’t helped by being room temperature).  I was going to bag it and chalk it up to one of those things that seems like a good idea, but really is a disappointment (much like dying your hair platinum blonde), but I kept drinking it.  It grew on me.  I don’t always buy Diet Coke, but when I do, it’s Blood Orange (my apologies to the World’s Most Interesting Man).

Lay’s Roasted Chicken and Thyme potato chips:  In many standard rom-coms, the heroine finds the hero distasteful, yet is somehow inexorably drawn to him.  So it is with me and the poulet rôti (avec thyme) potato chips.  In the US of A, I am a chip snob–organic, kettle cooked, and, if flavored, something putatively sophisticated like sea salt and vinegar or black pepper.  They don’t have that crap here.  In fact, I’m convinced that the reason the French are convinced that we know crap about food is, much like our TV, they often don’t get the best we have to offer.  They don’t know how good chips can be.  I’ve tried other poulet rôti flavored chips, and they are not worth eating (or writing about).  It has to have the thyme, although I’m not sure why.  Certainly it has nothing to do with the presence or absence of thyme, that’s for damn sure.  I made the mistake of reading the ingredient list (usually French processed crap food has less troubling crap in it than American processed crap food), which was both good and bad.  Bad, because the chips are chock-full of MSG (which everyone knows is the Devil).  Good, because I was so freaked out by the contents, I severely limit my consumption of them (I will only buy them from a train station vending machine, and even then, not every time I’m in a train station).  Because holy hell, they are tasty.  Scary, but tasty.  The MSG, while clearly shortening my life merely by typing the acronym, adds that certain umami je ne sais quoi that allows for maximum addiction/shame.

So yes, I have been eating delicious, wholesome, culinary respectable foods.  I buy my bread from a bakery that bakes it in a wood oven from the 18th century, for chrissakes.  But now you know my dirty secret.