C'est Nice

There's something inherently wrong in the fact that the French all take a day off for Halloween and the day after, but don't really celebrate it (outside of children dressing up). I complain about this most specifically because I hauled ass out to the Préfécture (a forty-five minute bus ride, each way) to pick up my residency card on Monday, thinking that it wasn't a holiday and everything would be open, to find that everything was in fact closed. So frequent is it for things to be closed on a monday or friday when there is a national holiday on a tuesday or thursday (to make the four day weekend) that they have a name for it: faire du pont, or "to make the bridge."

So, grr for that. I went today and got everything straightened out, although there were a few moments where people gave us the "I don't know who the hell you are or what you want" look, and the panicked thought of having to come back out there again another day streaked it's way across my mind. But I got the carte de sejour. I thought I'd take a picture of it to show everyone, but then I started wondering if it was legal to do that, and then I started thinking that I'd have to put one of those "SAMPLE" words over it to keep people from downloading it and making fake carte de sejours, and then I got tired, and thought, the hell with it.

My days haven't been particularly productive since I returned from Paris. A lot of laundry has been done, although it doesn't feel like I have a lot of clean clothes. On Halloween, after failing to get my CdS, I continued west to Cagnes-sur-Mer, a smallish town where an assistant who I know lives, Lucy. She was hanging out with Jody, a New Zealander who brought her four year old daughter, India, with her to France (Jody is older than us, my guess is 29 or 30... she can't be older than 34, that's the oldest you can be for the assistantship program). Jody's housing deal is she's living with a single mom who's a lawyer and her kid, whose name I can say but can't spell, Ergay or something like that; anyway, Jody does childcare and in exchange gets free housing, so Ergay was there as well. He's a sweet kid, as is India, although they are kept on pretty tight leashes. Anyway, Lucy, Jody and I took the kids up to some Halloween walk up at the Cagnes Castle, which had a whole beauty-and-the-beast quality to it. Eddie Izzard is totally right though: Europe is up to here with frickin' castles.

I started to feel terrible for not having a halloween costume... a traitor of sorts. I tried to find some face make-up at the last minute, but I've found that if you give a foreign country a chance to let you down, it often will. Anyway, no face makeup to be had for ready money. After that I started thinking about bleaching my hair, in tribute to the whole being-someone-you're-not-for-a-night idea, but then thought that after the night was over, I'd have a hell of a time dealing with my students if I walked in blonde tomorrow. So I did pretty much nothing. Drinks were had at Hamid's, a Londoner with a sweet pad just north of the Train station; he had a lot of leftover liquor fron a party he threw a couple of weeks ago. We continued on to Thor's, which was nice. I chatted with a girl from North Carolina, and we did the whole we-miss-america thing together. It was nice.

At some point I had been planning on slogging through my Halloween theories and philosophies, but I seem to have lost the energy. Instead, I thought I might see how far back I can go in my Halloweens. Bear with me.

2004: Donnie Darko - Watched the parade, bunches of people came over for that, continued on to the Hat(?). Brendan did something to his hair that involved lots of hair gel and hanging upside down.
2003: Guy from the Magritte Painting - Discovered the absolute perfection of my parent's apartment for viewing the parade. Jessica wore a sexy CJ/press secretary outfit, and then we ran into my parents in the lobby on our way out the door.
2002: I was working at the newspaper for this one. I don't think I dressed up as anything.
2001: Dyed my hair red, which came out more orange. Went up to Dobbs Ferry.
2000: I think this was the year I tried to go as a forest sprite and no one understood my costume. It involved a lot of trips to crafts stores for fake vines. Me and Janine tried to meet Jennifer at a Halloween party on Belvedere, and ended up wandering into some stranger's house. We never found Jennifer.
1999: I think I dressed up in some sort of Goth get-up for school, but for the evening of halloween, I tried to do the whole create a really scary set up for people to come get their candy from. I don't think it was terribly successful.
1998: This was the year that Janine and I decided to do our last trick-or-treating ever. Yes, we were 16. But it was still fun.
1997: I'm having trouble remembering this one... I was at Leadership... well, we'll see if it comes back to me.
1996: I can't remember at all what my costume was, but I'm pretty sure this was the year we ended up trick or treating at Mrs. Huizenga's house (my 8th grade Math Teacher)
1995: Okay, so the costumes have gotten pretty fuzzy at this point. I'm thinking this was the year that I went trick-or-treating with Tamara and Marissa, our neighbors from across the street from the 14th Avenue house. We discovered the orgy of candy that was the St. Francis Wood trick-or-treating scene.
1994: This would be the year of Cathedral school, and Anna's first halloween. Somehow, I think my sister's birth overshadowed the holiday (weird, right?).
1993: I'm pretty sure this was the year that Bernie and I dressed up as Starfleet officers (I have no shame).
1992: Our first Halloween in SF... I believe there was some trick or treating that happened with the various neighbors, but again, it's fuzzy.
1991 - 1983: Halloweens in St. Louis. It's difficult to keep all these straight, especially costume-wise. I know one year Bernie had an ear infection, and I took an extra halloween pumpkin to try and con candy out of the giving souls of clayton, MO with lines like "My wittle bwudda is sick at home and couldn't twick or tweat." I can't remember if that was the same year my mom had pneumonia, but that happened at halloween time, too. One year I dressed up in a bunny suit; there's a famous picture of me in it. It was a purple bunny suit. I know. Cute as a box of babies. I'm trying to remember any really little baby costumes, but I think the bunny suit is as far back as I go.

Anyway, I think that I've droned on long enough for one day. I hope everyone had a nice Halloween, and hopefully next year, I'll be stateside so I can do Halloween right.

Ghoul-bye!