They have bbqs in Paris??

It has come to be that I am now house sitting a three bedroom house with a back yard. Now if you have the luxury of a back yard, then you know it is your obligation to the rest of the world to throw at least 1 or 2 bbqs a week. However, if you know me at all, then you also know that I have a little OCD issue with cleaning, so this bbq business makes me start to twitch a bit. I love the idea of friends getting together to speak French around me while I stare blankly at the wall or clear plates from the table as much as the next guy, but when I spent all day excitedly vacuuming, dusting and laundering various items around the house to de-cat them, then the last thing I want to do is destroy my hard work. I look at cleaning like this beautiful thing I can control in my life. There are so few of these that I revel in every minute I get to spend in peace with the hoover.

So does this mean that I am socially screwed? Or more importantly, should I care more or at all that I am socially screwed? I am starting to slip further and further away from the desire to interact with humans, and continuing to feel quite contented with books, sun, and the little furry animals that are in my care. I am still soldiering on, 2 bbqs in a row in fact. Yesterday, I even inadvertently watched a 7 yr old for 6 hours and still managed to complete my housework and somewhat prepare for the arrival of adults. And, as usual, the company was awkward, aside from a few guests, and I ended up chilling with the 7 yr old and watching Catherine Deneuve in a rather f'ed up version of Cinderella called Peau d'Ane (English: Donkey Skin- this should support my claim of f'ed up.)

Well, I decided I would at least describe the differences in the French bbq. There are no hamburgers or hot dogs hitting the grill. Here we cook merguez, which is a red, spicy sausage from Algeria. I don't usually go for sausage, but it is quite tasty and goes really well with salad and red wine. The rest is your standard french fare, baguettes, cheese, and copious amounts of all kinds of wine. I have noticed a few interesting wine trends here: one, they add ice to white wine, two, they love rose in summer, and three, they don't necessarily care whose glass is whose as all drinks are community drinks. I do not go for this last trend at all, find it sort of disgusting, so I guard my glass. Perhaps they are not as disease ridden as we are in the US, but I'll keep my germs to myself and carefully select the germs of others whom I choose to ingest.

Tonight is round two, I slept well and the crowd will be completely different, so perhaps there is light at the end of the hoover. Today, I plan to relax in the sun, start a new book (Iris Murdoch's The Black Prince) and watch the cat follow the dog all around the house.