A stranger punched me - the way a friend would punch.

I've been writing every day since I was ten and I don't look at the old parts very often. When I do I find things like this:

“Also I am planning on hosting (is that a word?) a circus.”

- age 10 

“A stranger punched me in the hall today, the way a friend would punch! I need to find them.”
- age 13

“Don’t treat me like a child. I am two months away from possibly having a learner’s permit.”
- age 14

“Three wishes: lots of money, be really pretty, don’t really need a third wish.”
- age 15

“I feel so lonely and angry and no one understands me. I also have a pretty solid tan.”
- age 17

I high-fived a stranger and they put a hex on me

Today in internet news: two of my really awesome friends have a podcast and they let me talk with them on it.

One important story I didn't get to was this: once when I was driving back from my first job, I was two hours from home in middle-of-nowhere Minnesota and got lost.

I pulled over to the side of this sketchy empty road to look for a map in my trunk, no luck. I tried to call my mom, but my pay-as-you-go phone hadn't been paid as I went and was out of minutes. I set the phone on top of my car (FORESHADOWING) and walked around the street a ways, looking for a mirage or spirit animal to guide me. Once I picked a direction I got back in the car, and drove away with my cell phone still on the roof and it flew off  into the forest never to be seen again until it appeared under one of our couch cushions six years later!!

That's the really good kind of story, where you're dragged through a lot of details and then the last dozen words so random and not logical and I just say "Look how big cell phones were in 2005!" and you sit there blinking and I say go listen to the podcast, it's a lot better. And I'm the last guest.

 

Left: new cell phone, Right: sneak-attack magic lost cell phone from 2005

Everywhere ever

Not sure why I’m making so many charts like this lately but I can tell you they’re extremely important and useful.

Thirteen dealbreakers for my younger sisters

This is a combination of 3 lists but is still short enough you can keep it in your wallet.


Long hair
Over 5’10
Shorter than me
Bodybuilder
Wears cowboy boots
Wears Hawaiian shirts
Weird laugh
Wants to live outside Minnesota
Wants to live in the middle of nowhere
Hunter
Gamer
Doesn’t like Taylor Swift
Creeps me out

the only thing he won't eat is lettuce

I miss my dog the most when I'm leaving a room, and instinctively place any food items up on a counter out of reach. Then I remember that unfortunately, no one is going to jump on the table and polish off the stick of butter or tear apart my backpack to get to that package of M&Ms. I can leave snacks in low places without rushing to the vet or cleaning dog vomit off my favorite sweater.

When I remember I stop for a second, and then go ahead and put them up on the counter. Just in case.

If you're reading this McGee - I'm always ready for you to drop by. Also, if you can read, can you also write? The pawprint on my birthday card from the family looked forged.

that's a dog browsing a department store, completely unsupervised

If you move often the thing you miss the most is the way it feels to live somewhere for a year. After a year you don't have bruises from running into doorways and furniture in your apartment (I'm really clumsy) and you could almost do everything with your eyes closed because your hand has memorized the exact height of your shelf and the snooze button on your alarm clock and how the fridge opens.

The fridge at my new apartment opens on the opposite side you'd think it would, and every time I try and open it I spend a quarter of a second thinking "What the heck is wrong with this thing. How am I supposed to get the milk out of it? This isn't right, this isn't my fridge, this isn't my home."

Right now my home is Marseille. The things I miss most about Marseille lately is the width of the sidewalk and the amount of sunlight and the whiteness of the buildings and redness of the rooftops. It took me a year to memorize how far from the curb to walk and how much to squint, and the peach-tint of every day, iced with a layer of Marseille-blue sky. I miss knowing the exact price of my staple foods at the grocery store. I miss the shade of orange my curtains were. I miss knowing where to hold my breath because it smelled bad. Three steps past the antique book store smells like dead rats. Twelve steps past the macaron shop smells like urine. These are constants. These things never change. Unless you move to the other side of the world.



Maybe in a few months Los Angeles will be home, but right now it isn't, and even though I love my family, neither is Minnesota. Right now I'm a confused girl wandering lost around a grocery store full of strangely-priced food, wondering if she's going to be homesick for the rest of her life.

happily ever after

"Don't touch him!" I yell at a group of friendly strangers. Every time I take my tiny poodle for a walk, well-meaning people come over and reach their fingers toward him and say "What a sweet little - OH GOODNESS SORRY!" Do not reach your fingers toward my dog.

My dog barks at everyone. This morning when a little old man teetered past our front lawn, my dog barked so loudly I glanced out to make sure his cane wasn't a machine gun.

But, for all that barking at sweet old men, my dog never bites. Or when he does, he has what my family calls "a soft bite." The best definition of a this is that one time he picked up our pet parakeet in his mouth. He just held her there as though his teeth were arms and he was rocking her, and when he set her down she flew back up to her cage, completely unharmed, while the entire family screamed in terror.

And last night while we were walking my dog picked up a huge gray frog in his mouth, and before I could do whatever a responsible pet owner would do at that point, he spit it back out on the ground, gave it a respectful nod, and turned to walk home.

Two conclusions:

The more time I spend with animals, the less I understand about animals.

If my dog ever licks my face I will either throw up or turn into a princess. I think that's how that works.

you want to see crime?

PARISIAN WOMAN AT MY HOSTEL: So, where are you from?
ME: The United States.
PARISIAN: Cool, which one? California? Miami? New York City?
ME: Minnesota actually.
PARISIAN: Oh, is that by Florida?
ME: No it's by Canada.
PARISIAN: I don't know this, what else?
ME: It's by the Great Lakes.
PARISIAN: I don't know this, what else?
ME: I live near Minneapolis.
PARISIAN: I don't know this, what else?
ME: Well, I guess the next city is Chicago.
PARISIAN: OHHHH! You're from CHICAGO! Why didn't you say so?! City of crime, eh? Look out everyone!

not my style

I hate to disapoint people who think I'm surrounded by haute-couture runway fashion, but I feel safe in estimating that there is more English on clothing in France than there is in the U.S.


French brand popular with middle-schoolers


For reasons unknown, 98% of French people own this sweatshirt.

Usually it's teenagers and adults sporting these English words and slogans, and they all speak enough English to know what their clothing says. Not the case with elementary schoolers. Today I was practicing introductions with a class of ten-year-olds, and they were really struggling. Their shirts, however, had a lot to say.

One girl's shirt: "Things I like: painting my nails, going for walks, talking on the phone. THINGS I LOVE: TEXTING JACOB!" Another girl's read "I'm way too young." I had no comment on either of these shirts.

The boy wearing a sweatshirt that said "MINNESOTA: a Camp the original sr0ike 173-4-" wasn't as lucky. "Where did you get that sweatshirt?" I kept asking. "You know that's where I live, right? That's the state I'm from, on your sweatshirt. Followed by some gibberish, but still." He'll probably never wear it again.

where the good girls and boys live

I live in a beautiful city right on the ocean, and it's November and still warm. Awesome for me, lame for French kids who want snow. It's snowed once in the last eight years, and it lasted less than an hour. Whenever I tell a class that we have snow they yell out "La chance!" in unison. (Lucky!)

I've introduced myself to elementary-schoolers so many times that I have it down. I show them a photo of my family. I show them my Minnesota Twins shirt and tell them about baseball. That one always impresses them, and I see them looking at each other like "Hey, that shirt says 'Minnesota' on it; she isn't making this up." Then I show them a pair of gloves and say that where I'm from, there is a lot of snow.

Then things get crazy. Usually French children raise their fingers instead of their hands. But not when you mention snow. They're raising their arms, they're climbing on their desks to get higher. Do you ski? How do you get places? Are all the flights canceled? How do you keep your house warm? Do you wear coats? These were all real questions.

But the best one came from an adorable boy in blue glasses and a soccer jersey, who was holding his breath until I called on him. He let out a sigh of relief when I finally did, and then asked "In Minnesota, is it Christmas every day?"

Of freaking course it is. I said there was snow, didn't I?



Is there a more awesome place then America? We have Barack Obama. We have the White House, which for some reason all 8-year-old French children are obsessed with. We have Michael Jackson and Hollywood and hamburgers. But that wasn't enough. So those scientists in Minnesota, bless their hearts, they sat down and finally found out a way to make it Christmas every single day. That's probably why when the kids finally start to calm down, after I tell them I have one Christmas a year and I've never met Jay-Z or the president, I get the same question in every class:

"Why on earth did you leave and come here?"

the money's under your hat

MORNING
Woke up early and didn't have anything to do so I gave myself bangs. Yikes.



AFTERNOON
Saw someone downtown wearing a Twins hat! I have never been so excited to see a stranger in my whole life. My friends heard people speaking English and came over, and I introduced my new friend: "This guy is wearing a Twins hat!" After we parted ways they asked me where I knew him from. From five minutes ago when I saw he was wearing a Twins hat. Already covered this, guys.

Every time I see someone I know in Marseille I get so excited - "Almost a million people in this city, what are the chances I would see HER!" I always say. And my friends point out that the chances are pretty high, because this is the street she lives on, or we're all walking to the same restaurant, or it's a really popular bus stop. But I think meeting people from Minnesota was crazy, good luck convincing me otherwise.

NIGHT
Ate dinner at an Indian restaurant with fellow teachers and our awesome Parisian friend Anne. Then went home and my French family had dinner ready - gluten-free pasta salad. So I ate a second time, for the third time this week. Afterward we watched a movie and I fell asleep several times but I think I covered it up pretty well?

These middle-of-the-night baseball games are really messing up my sleeping schedule.

I'm going to call it right now.

Everyone here wears Yankees hats, which has had me seeing red the last couple days.

My friend said that when you ask a French person in a Yankees hat if they're a big fan, they always answer "What are Yankees? I love New York!" and point to the NY. So that's some consolation.

Even better consolation would be if I could watch it on tv when the Twins beat them tonight.