“F*ck You”- Love, France: The Last 48 Hours Of Our 10-Month Expat Adventure

And how nothing is ever anyone's fault in France.

Have you ever wondered why, when you decide to leave a person or a place or a job, the universe decides to serve you all the reasons why you should leave? Well, Paris served her best helping of “au revoir” and don’t-let-“la porte”-hit-you-on-the-way-out in our last two days. No really, Murphy’s Law was in full effect which left us happily packing our bags and bidding her goodbye. It all started by getting waxed.

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48 hours to departure: “Fuck you”, Love, France #1, Back-ne from a bad wax.

As I’ve mentioned in previous Substacks (Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow Part 1, Part 2, & Part 3), I’ve covered my issues with hair loss due to perimenopause quite extensively, going so far as to interview my cousin, who is a dermatologist. After going on Rogaine-by-mouth (hair came back) and off of it (hair fell out), I started back up with the pills I had left from America. Which, caused me to grow a layer of fuzz all over my arms, back, and face. Which, seeing as we had a wedding to run to as soon as we stepped off of the plane in NYC, I figured, I needed to wax my whole body so as not to look like the bearded lady in an evening gown. It was the first and last time I will ever wax my back because, for some reason, the wax irritated it to the point of making me look like I have teenage back-ne. We’re talking deep cystic, acne with pustules on top. When I asked our local pharmaciste in our neighborhood arrondissement if she would accept a prescription from an American doctor (again, my cousin to the rescue!) she said, “Mais oui!” “Just have her send it to our email address. No problem.” My cousin sent them the request and, after standing in line for twenty minutes because all the pharmacists talk to everyone about their lives, the same pharmacist let me know that the email would not suffice. It would have to be a physical piece of paper that my doctor writes on and signs and takes a picture of and emails THAT. “Désolée. C’est pas ma faute.” (“Sorry. It’s not my fault.”) If I had a euro for every time I heard a French person say it’s “not their fault,” I would be a billionaire. So, now I have a backless dress to wear to a wedding that I will need to wear a sweater under in 90 degree weather in order to hide the back-ne.

This was the dress I bought BEFORE the wax. I returned it AFTER the wax and went for a black jumpsuit with full back coverage.

36 hours to departure: “Fuck You”, Love, France #2, Barefoot in Paris.

I went and got the mandatory-for-a-wedding manicure/pedicure. While normally, in NYC this is a treat, I wasn’t looking forward to this one because frankly, I really don’t love the way they do them in Paris. In NYC they offer you all kinds of extras: massages, peels, running a cheese-grater up and down your disgusting feet as your DNA piles up underneath them. But, seeing as there’s this wedding to attend the moment we step off the plane, and it’s summer sooooo…toes to contend with. I asked the Korean nail technician if I can pay by card or cash and she says, “C’est paraît,” (It’s the same.) The place wasn’t clean and now I’m worried I have caught a fungus but hey, what’s another fungal infection that takes a decade to get rid of! But the digits turned out fine at the end of the day. When I said, I wanted to pay by card, “s’il vous plaît”, she said she can’t take the card. So it wasn’t “paraît” and to make it even more annoying she said, “C’est pas ma faute,” (It’s not my fault.”)

It was the credit card company’s fault for charging a fee. I had to walk up the Montmartre hill to get cash at the atm and when I came back down the hill with all my weight pushing down on my poor little flip flops, my right one broke and I was forced to walk back down the hill to pay, then back up the hill, and home, barefoot.

30 hours to departure: “Fuck you” Love, France #3, My panties were literally in a bind.

It was a mad dash between five grown adults to get the laundry done before packing. Two of my sons combined their clothes into one load and, for some reason, they didn’t dry. I grilled them on how they programmed the washer/dryer (another hurdle to moving to another country is to figure out how to use their appliances, fyi) and they swore they did it right. Why was it acting up now?? I’ll tell you why: Murphy’s law.

Anyway, my sneakers were disgusting and I didn’t want to pack them in my bag without being washed. I trained for the Paris marathon in those Hokas and, even though I didn’t end up running the damn thing, my shoes were wearing double-digit Parisian miles with traces of dog shit and human urine inside their tread.

After my shoes run their cycle I went to take them out and the door wouldn’t open. It was locked shut. I turn it off, I turn it on. It wouldn’t budge. I call Blueground, our corporate housing concierge, and they tell me to unplug it. Can’t. It is plugged in behind the oven which can’t be pulled out by mere American mortals. This calls for a plumber who can’t get there until the next morning “first thing” on our last day in Paris. Suffice to say, he doesn’t show up until 5 p.m. that night, just before our dinner reservations and found the culprit of the locked door: my underwear had been sucked into the filter, blocking the water from draining, thus, forcing the door to stay locked. The technician gave me a look like, “girl, are these your nasty little panties?”, to which I replied, “C’est pas ma faute!”

24 hours to departure: “Fuck you”, Love, France #4, A brush with death.

Our last 24 hours in Paris. The sun rises. The coffee is brewing, creating that bitter sweet, smell of wakey-wakey. The last of the yaourt (yogurt) has been scraped out and consumed. Nothing feels better than using-up the lasts of things and knowing you aren’t gonna need to replace them…ever. My dog takes her last dump on the cobblestones up the hill from Lamarck and Caulaincourt where I think to myself, “I’m gonna miss this potty spot.” Not only is it architecturally beautiful, but one time I found a five euro bill tucked neatly between the stones whilst searching for her poop pellets that she tracks, one by one: walk a little, plop, walk a little, plop, walk a li-plop, plop, plop.

While picking up the plops with the plastic bag, (not without side eye from some uppity older French lady irritated with the fact that I let my dog plop at all on the precious stones of Montmartre), I spy Tor and my son drive off to play tennis at the city courts across town. Securing tennis courts in Paris are nothing like NYC. First of all, there are plenty of courts to choose from in each arrondissement. Second, you can sign-up online for an actual time and it’s only $20/hr prime time, and $12 off-peak. No, showing up and waiting for a turn that you may or may not get on the free courts and don’t get me started on all the pay-to-play courts in NYC that charge upwards of $200/hr. Talk about an elite sport. You have to be the son or the daughter or the they or the spouse of, or an actual hedge fund CEO in order to afford to consistently play tennis anywhere in Manhattan.

The day goes by, my son Colton and Tor return, we are all running our last-minute errands and, at about 1 p.m., Colton says, “I can’t find my wallet.” It seems that the wallet he SWORE he put back in the tennis bag, magically jumped out of said tennis bag and was left on the bench of court #4 in the 20th arrondissement. Tor offered to take him to get it on the motorcycle we’d rented for the year and he was returning later that afternoon so, all was well. Turns out, all wasn’t well at all.

Five minutes outside of the motorcycle garage where our pathetic little Royal Enfield Meteor was to be returned, a van came flying out of nowhere while running a red light and literally hit them. Let me repeat that…a van hits a motorcycle. Miraculously, the front fender tore off of the van and there was little to no damage to front wheel/axle of the bike. If the van had hit them a millisecond later, it would have broken both of their left legs, (and god knows what else) and we would have ended up in the emergency room, not flying home to NYC. Tor and Colton were assessing the minimal damage to the bike when a Chinese guy jumps out of the van and I shit you not, the first thing he says is, “C’est pas ma faute!”

It was his “faute.” It was ALL his faute. The cops came, sided with Tor because they were clearly racist against the Chinese guy who could barely speak French, and let them take each other’s license plate numbers. Tor returned the bike and we immediately canceled any future transactions with the company in case they might think something was our “faute” in the future.

AI generated photo. NOT our actual bike.

1.5 hours to departure: “Fuck you”, Love France, #5, The final fuck.

We left in plenty of time, having to take 2 Ubers because when I ordered an Uber XXL van to fit 5 people plus all our luggage, the sent a Toyota Prius. Whatever. We were going “home.”

We got a great agent at check-in who allowed us an extra bag for free and suggested we take my son’s electric bass on board and ask the flight attendants to put it in the 1st class closet. (Travel tip for all of us poor folk who fly, there is a closet in 1st that you, too, can use for free for certain over-sized items!)

As we worked our way through the security line, I noticed that we were in a line for 18+ years or older and my son Wesley was 17. We shifted to the other line which, then, we were at a stand still. Again, we had plenty of time.

The minutes ticked away. Whatever. Plenty of time, right? When we finally got to the conveyor belt, I noticed that Tor and our other two boys were already through and bopping off to get something to eat. We would be joining them shortly I was sure of it. This was a huge mistake. Never be sure of anything in life, but especially in France.

As soon as we pushed our bins forward, the conveyor belt stopped. And stayed stopped. After 5 minutes, I asked in French, “What is happening? Why isn’t it moving?”, and the security man said, “It is broken.” I asked if we could get our stuff back which, we could actually collect back because it handn’t gone through yet, we could still literally see it and he could help us grab it and move to the other working conveyor belt, but “Non.” And you’ll never guess what he said…"C’est pas ma faute.”

We barely made it in time to board our flight, but we did make it; sitting down in our seats with a sigh of exhaustion and gratitude and lot of, “WTF just happened” bulging out of our eyes. Roxy, our 4 pound Chihuahua, lay in her case in ignorant bliss. She was the lucky one, strung-out on Xanax and having zero recollection of the trials and tribulations of what we were put through to make this flight or even, the entire France experience really. Unlike Roxy, all of our experiences over the last ten months would be living in our cells, shifting our evolutionary DNA forever. The core of our beings had been rocked. We were returning to the U.S. forever changed and as the saying goes in French, “Ça valait la peine.” (It was worth the pain.)

As our Boeing, 787 Dreamliner rose up through the French clouds, (not after a final delay of an hour due to the cabin door not closing properly) only one unanswered question was bothering me:

If it’s no one’s fault in France, then, whose is it?

In Laughter,
LStL

p.s. One week to the day after we said “au revoir” to Paris, THIS happened: (video credit to climate.apocalypse on Instagram) Some would say it was no one’s faute. Others would say it’s ALL our faute.