flower power

So yesterday, coming back from Wall-E with Eoghan, we came in the loading dock doors on the lower level. As we were waiting for the elevator, Jim handed me a bouquet of flowers.

No, this time, he hadn't put one over one me by stopping in for "Kleenex" or something. Rather, he'd grabbed them from the settee in the elevator lobby.

For which I give him credit, as I hadn't done so. "Oh, yeah, I saw those there earlier," I said. "Do you think we can take 'em?"

"Beats me. Should I leave them?" Jim asked.

I shrugged. "Nah, I mean, they were there, like, yesterday," I said, glancing at Eoghan for confirmation. Why, I don't know, since Eoghan hadn't been on the terrace level of our apartment since, um, ever. But still.

So we brought the random bouquet upstairs. I made the mixture of plant food and water, put it into a vase, cut the stems, and stuck the whole thing in. (I'm not good at arrangments; I leave that to my mother, who is wonderful with such things.) It looked nice, and basically wasn't dead yet, which was enough for me.

Then this morning I was making breakfast, and I looked over at the vase and said, aloud, "What the hell?!"

Because the water?

Had turned bright pink.
I kid you not. And seriously, science geeks, I do not understand this particular chemical reaction. I mean -- was the plant food to blame? The flowers themselves? What the hell kind of reaction is going on in my vase?

But in the meantime, I guess, well, meh. My flowers are still alive, which I can't always say the day after sticking a bouquet in water. If water so fluorescent it seems radioactive is to blame, then I'll take it.

Even if it really doesn't go with my color scheme.

je t'en prie, paris

So my cousin Bram, after posting something like four gajillion photo albums on Facebook of his recent trip to Paris (I salute you, Bram -- that's quite an organizational feat), decided to make a "Best of" album so that we don't have to flick through the eight googlezillion pictures he actually uploaded.

One immediately caught my eye as being the actual visual representation of my personal Parisian ideal. I actually almost started drooling with a weird kind of location-hunger; my eyes turned into little cartoon stars and my stomach turned flips, as my brain said, "Must...move...there....now!"

Sigh. I can trace the roots of my francophilia way way back, but there's no denying it; I'm a homesick French wannabe. We'll see if I manage to rectify that ever in life -- a little cottage in the south of France or a wee nineteenth-century apartment in Paris. The biggest headache is convincing the folks to move with me, since Mom doesn't like to fly enough to come visit on a regular basis.

Oh, and speaking of Aix*: I also reconnected with members of the French family with whom I spent much of a summer in high school. The eldest daughter, Marie, had been an au pair for my next-door neighbors, and now the eldest next-door neighbor daughter is an au pair for Marie's little ones! And, apparently, Cady managed to get Marie using Facebook, so: Je te remercie, Cady, pour trouver mon ancienne amie.

Anyway, Marie now lives near Aix-en-Provence. Again: droooool...

Yeah, it's a big ol' Facebook-meets-France lovefest (...not that kind) in my house today, to be capped off by mini-burgers and cupcakes. Which are totally French, thank you very much.

*Aix. Aches. Yeah, I even make myself groan, I'm so punny.