Joe le Plumber

The plumber showed up and stayed for hours. Dick insists on trying to tell me what the plumbing is about, it makes no sense and I don’t care.
Getting this apartment is all I care about and its a very French experience. Today is a hard day, for sure. The bureaucracy is utterly astonishing. We need every piece of paper we have and more. Every time it hits a new high Dick says, it’s just like fill in the blank existentialist novel, mostly Kafka. It’s rough, the waiting, they seem to work mostly between 3 and 5 p.m. Monday through Thursday, at best. They call or make appointments for late in the day, so you can never get anything done until, tomorrow. When you exclude weekends and mornings, everything takes forever to move at a snail’s pace.
The queer thing is, I still want to pursue it. I want to understand a place where, double kisses greet you, when you enter a restaurant you seek out a member of staff, say bonjour and they tell you to sit anywhere. Then you’re in.
The people are usually very warm, they remind me of the people in Italy, They talk a lot, are very friendly and considerate, even as they are rushing past you and cutting you off. A woman tripped over Dick today because she was hurriedly angling past him, she looked back and apologized to him, and gave him an “are you alright face” and then a smile.
They gesture at everything while driving, and blow their horns constantly, they are truly crazy drivers. But there are about 3 crosswalks with lights in every block, at least in every area I have seen so far. Bikes, buses and taxis share a lane some going contrary to traffic. People will help you as much as they can even when you can’t really communicate with them.
All that business about Parisians being rude is nonsense. They do have their own way of doing things, but they are very tolerant and kind of fun to figure out.
There are essentially 2 kinds of waiters/waitresses. Type A:The kind that has seen it all, is very efficient, hands you a menu in English and rolls his eyes when you ask for your meat medium well or order water with your meal. He asks “termineay?” before you even take your first bite.
Then there is Type B, the kind who will explain everything, politely correct your french with, “in France we say ... .” and acts as if it breaks his heart if you don’t clean your plate.
Of course, there are also the one’s that turn from type A to B mid-service. We had a fabulous lunch at a lovely bistro/steak joint. The waiter did indeed roll his eyes when I asked for my small steak to be well done. It came with a sangria colored center. I asked him to suggest a wine to go with my steak, before I even finished my faux-french sentence, he named the wine and warmed to me. He wore those little horn-rimmed glasses I associate with Peter Lorre, his head was shaved bald, bit there were little black nubs all over it that came to a widow’s peak v a few inches above the glasses.
He became very sweet and concerned post wine order. He was the picture of the perfect french waiter with his white apron, white shirt and black pants.
None of this, “My name is Lou Lou and I will be your server this evening”, no stuffing the order pad in the back of their waistband, a practice I find kind of gross anyway. I don’t want the waiter to put anything in his pants and then touch anything without washing his hands in between. They are usually very elegant and efficient no matter how they are dressed.
One place we go to has their waitresses dress all in black. There is one sassy mid-aged blonde who wears pink feather earrings and a top that says Trashy in pink sequins as she serves us our breakfast coffee. She is an excellent waitress who would fit in perfectly on roller skates on Venice Beach.