Yes, I do miss them, sometimes, just sometimes...

My little dog (lets call her Toutou) had un petit accident during the night. Over the weekend, we went to the market and I noticed they sold some cheap cuts of meat specifically pour chien. Since the poor dog lives with one strict vegetarian and one nearly vegetarian, I figured I owed it to her to get her a little treat. She was very excited and gobbled up the cuts I gave her in about seven point five seconds, before I even had a chance to put it back in the fridge.

Well, this morning, we woke up, and I guess it had been a bit too rich for her little doggie tummy, because there was crotte all over the living room rug.

So we rolled up the old rug (it was old and filthy, we've been meaning to get a new one anyway) and dumped it in the garbage downstairs, then hopped on the bus towards the Champs Elysees to buy a new rug. We were lucky since even though today is a holiday, many of the shops were still open. Eddie had half the day off but then in the afternoon had to make an emergency trip to the office, leaving me to lug the new rug back home on the bus.

Except for a brief period of time in my teens when I was cruising around California in an old Volkswagen Beetle, I've always hated driving. I've never subscribed to car culture, I hate sitting in traffic, I hate how otherwise kind and gentle people become road rage monsters behind the wheel, making gestures that normally one does not make in polite company. I should qualify all this actually by saying what I hate is city driving, I do like a road trip on an empty highway with the windows rolled down. But otherwise, one of the many things I adore about living in Paris is the convenience of public transportation, the fact that the metro and bus goes everywhere, and that having a car is actually more of a pain than not having a car.

Except when you have to lug a rug back on the bus.

I had a little fantasy, while trying to keep the rug from tipping over onto people's laps in the bus and then trying not to whack cyclists off their scooters as I carried the rug sideways down the narrow Parisian rues, of just being able to toss it into my car, drive home, then leave it in the car till Eddie came home and could help me load it into the elevator.

Then again, that thing would NEVER have fit into the back of my VW anyway....


(P.S. That's not my Toutou in the picture, but she had a similar look on her face this morning)