Wednesday, April 2, 2008

The Case of the Missing Pants and My Continued Disgust with the Merde in Paris

The Case of the Missing Pants

Yesterday I woke up and found that I was not wearing any pants; All I had on was my T-shirt and my undies and this was after going to sleep in my most comfy pair of sweatpants.

Upon further reflection, I vaguely remembered taking them off at some point during the night because I was hot, my skin was dry and the pants were irritating me. I didn't see them beside my bed, on the table by my bed or on the night table. I figured that I must have taken them off under the covers and so logically they should be under my blanket. I had no time to search for them as I had to get ready for work anyways so I decided to hold off on searching for the pants until I got home.

I came home and upon seeing my bed I remembered that I had to find the pants. I searched under the covers, behind the pillows and in the little corner space beside the bed but could not for the life of me find the pants. Now my bed is what the french call a clic-clac, i.e. a sofa-bed, so it isn't very big and my apartment is just a studio so I could and in fact did a search of the entire apartment minus the closet and the cupboards (I can't imagine why I would put the pants in those places in the middle of the night) but still could not find the pants. So now I no longer have my most comfortable pair of housepants. I have to settle for my two other pairs of pants that are thinner and not as comfy. AND I am wondering where on earth I could have put them in the middle of the night while I was sleeping.

...And Oh How I Hate The Merde

Since I'm already complaining, I might as well emphasize again how much I ABHOR the merde (translated it is one of the more colourful 4-letter words in english) on the streets of Paris. It's everywhere! I know I look like such a tourist because I have no qualms about hop-skipping over and around the poo in order not to step in any. I think what pisses me off the most is that it's not just the easy-to-spot-fresh-poo that one has to deal with while navigating the streets. It's that there is a whole lot more flattened dried poo on the streets, created by merde that people have stepped in and then proceeded to wipe off by sliding their shoes along the sidewalk so that they've created a veritable trail of flattened dog poo. As there is merde everywhere these trails of merde are also everywhere in greater abundance. I think that when it's a matter of choosing to either walk in the fresh lumpy dog poo or on the flat dried up trails or hop-skipping like me then the french choose to just walk on the dried up trails. I cannot do this at all and so I will continue with my hop-skipping.

The other thing is that because of these dirty streets, I don't feel comfortable having my shoes in the apartment because God knows what I have stepped in, especially at night. When I'm walking home at night, I can't stop cursing to myself because although I do the hop-skipping, because I'm damn near half blind and I wear contacts I don't see everything properly and I just know that I step in a lot of the trails at night. I dream of having a huge locked storage box just outside my door in which I could keep the shoes I wear outside. And I would have house slippers for guests. That way no nasty particles would enter the apartment. Someone directed me to read A Year in the Merde by Stephen Clarke. Apparently, he either considered or actually followed through with wearing plastic over his shoes when he went out so that he could ensure that the soles of his shoes were clean. I would so do that, were I more courageous!

So now when I see people on the streets with their pooches I have to look away from them because I cannot help but glare at them. Mostly I glare inside, i.e., try not to show it outwardly, but still it might show on my face if I look at them directly, especially when I see them with their dogs taking a dump and I know they have no intention to pick up anything!

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