My Last Day

Friday, February 26th: my last day in Paris for awhile. It was nice today, sunny and spring-like. It's been warmer the past few days, and I know I'm going home to snow and 28 degrees Fahrenheit. But it's still home.

My cold has gotten worse today, and all of a sudden I realized I'm tired. My legs are tired (I've done so much walking), and I'm tired of living in a one-room apartment and I'm tired of wearing the same clothes all the time and I'm tired of being alone at night and alone when I wake up in the morning. I'm ready to go home.

I had a good last day with my granddaughter. I brought sandwiches for lunch today, and Matt came home from work to have lunch with us. In the afternoon Jeanne had made an appointment to get a massage; her mother had given her a package of massages for her pregnancy, and she hadn't used them all. So we set off to do some shopping, and then I was planning to stroll Juliet around while her mother got a massage. This was not what Juliet had planned! Actually, I think she may have gotten cold, and then upset. Sometimes when she gets upset you just can't get her calmed down. Today was one of those days.

Five minutes into Jeanne's massage Juliet was crying and nothing I could do would appease her. We strolled around for another twenty minutes, but she was only getting more upset. So I took her back to the massage parlor, thinking I could get a bottle from Jeanne there. Of course, Jeanne heard her crying and came right out. By this time Juliet was really mad, so it took Jeanne a while to calm her down. And that was the end of the massage.

I came back to my apartment to meet the owner and get the deposit check back, then went back to Levallois to go out to dinner for our last evening. We had a great dinner at Mandalay, an Asian-fusion place. Juliet enjoyed herself there, too, and received lots of admiring looks from the other customers. I got to hold her quite a bit (see above picture) so I was a happy grandma.

I said goodbye to Jeanne and Juliet; in some ways it was harder to leave Jeanne than Juliet because we've become quite close over the four weeks. But we'll see them this summer. Matthew is driving me to the airport in the morning, so it's time to get to bed. Tomorrow will be a long day.