Airplane

Whew, I've been lazy a long time! First I was very sick--more antibiotics, making for more since we've been in France than in the last five years, at least. I'm much better now, though. Then Jonathan got back into writing, and has been typing busily whenever Tristram is asleep.

But now for the update:

I am the proud owner of one meter of stretch lining, in a color matching my skirt, no less. See, it does exist! Now I am slowly sewing the lining in and working on a baby jacket to teach myself to crochet. It's not for any actual baby, so it doesn't matter how many beginner mistakes I make. I am again astounded at how badly most patterns are written. A little editing, please? This one, at one point, randomly has instructions for a row 5 in between rows 1 and 2. And the row 5 in question doesn't seem actually to be part of this pattern at all. Still, I am having a lot of fun with it, and feeling superior about having some editing skills.

Easter Monday, we went to the Promenade Plantee, which I had found in our Paris guidebook. I highly recommend that anyone spending more than a week in France pick up a Michelin Guide Vert for their region. Any local shop that sells a lot of magazines should have a rack of them. That's how we've now discovered two of our favorite spots in Paris, the Promenade Plantee and the park at Butte Chaumont. Both are big Parisian favorites but tourists don't know about them. The Michelin green guides are in French, of course, which poses more of a problem for some of you than for others, but they have maps that are much more useful than the text anyway.

So, the P.P. is an abandoned raised train track that they've converted into just what it sounds like, a planted walkway. Beautifully planted, lots of benches, runs 4.5 miles, takes you through a big park that looks like it's out of a Star Trek: The Next Generation-style utopian future, and eventually spits you out a few blocks from the Bois de Vincennes. I got to see my first peonies of the year! It's a great case of urban good-use-of-space planning. At times it runs through spaces that you know would be dirty alleys at street level, and once even through a building. Oh, and it's wired as a WiFi zone, too.

We went back to the Bois de Vincennes on Wednesday to try to take Tristram to the Parc Zoologique, which I've seen lots of raves about. Turns out it closed in December for at least four years of renovations. Wish they'd mentioned that somewhere on their website. The Bois, though, is beautiful, and huge, and we are still going back later this week (Jonathan's second and last week of vacances for spring) to try to see the Parc Floral, the Ferme de Paris, and the tropical aquarium in the Palais de la Porte Doree, which used to be a big monument to French imperialism and is now an aquarium and a museum of African and Oceanic art. It's worth a trip just to see the outside of the building and have a picnic in the Bois, next time you're in Paris. At least, we'll try to do one or more of those; all three might be a little ambitious. The closer we get to leaving, the more I feel like we've barely scratched the surface. Paris is inexhaustible.

Yesterday we walked to the Parc de Bois Preau for a picnic; it's a big park that used to part of the Napoleonic lands here. There's a big statue of Josephine, but mostly it's just a nice big park that's mostly open space so your kids can run around. Tristram is having fun seeing how far he can get from us; once he hits the end of his comfort zone he walks back and forth on that line. He ate falafel and ran around and generally had a good time and wore himself out. Today we took him goat-kissing. It was farm weekend again, and since it was rainy we guessed (correctly) that it would be much less crowded. He petted bunnies, who nibbled his fingers and made him laugh, and petted baby goats and mama goats and the daddy goat, and saw the cows and ducks and chickens, and was bored with the sheep. But mostly he kissed every goat that came within range. He was once again pointed out as the example child, this time by a mom who was holding her daughter (three or four?) at arms' length over the fence into the baby goat pen trying to get her to feed them a cracker. The kid was crying and saying, "Mais j'ai peur!", and the mom pointed at Tristram and said, "Arrete de fair le bebe! Regarde, c'est un tout-petit bebe et il n'a pas peur!" I don't understand why so many parents want to force their kids to do things they are afraid of. I mean really, would her life be severely impeded even if she were always too afraid to feed crackers to goats? The forcing confrontation/shaming thing; I don't get it.

I do get, though, that Tristram is quite the intrepid little goat-kisser. He loves his animals, and he is learning how to be very nice and gentle with them. That bodes well for the cats.