moving on

Blogger.com has done something bizarre to the format, it's completely different as I write, and I have no idea where I am. Well, we'll see if this actually goes on-line. Why do they do that, just yank you into something new when the old was perfectly fine? Am I sounding like a fogey here? Fogeys, unite!

It says on-line that the Air Canada office at CDG opens at 7.30 a.m. but when you call at 7.30, it says they open at 9. Now you know. I am calling to see if I can change my ticket home, from next Wednesday to sooner. Mum is still in hospital, and my poor brother is dealing with a lot. And my daughter just wrote - her midwife says the baby is starting to descend. The drama of all this is overwhelming.

Last night, dinner with new French friends. People say the French are stand-offish, but it ain't so - Annie and I met at a bus stop in 2009, both waiting for the bus when someone came along to say that the midwives of France were marching nearby, and all transit had been stopped. I must have looked dismayed, because Annie asked where I'd been going and offered to steer me there, since it was close to her stop. We ended up walking for a long time, deep in conversation with lots in common, and when we got to her place, she invited me up to meet her husband. And so we became friends, and I visit them each time I'm in Paris. She is working with Jean-Paul Sartre's daughter on re-editing his work for new editions - she gave me the latest - and he is an Italian film studies professor, with a large family in Rome. Their sons are in film and theatre. But besides art and politics, we spent a lot of time talking about the needs of aging parents and grandchildren.

I went to a market Thursday morning, relished looking at every delicious thing, came home empty-handed. Though I have fallen deeply in love again - this time with a flower, the ranunculus, a spring flower with layer on layer of petals so fine, they're nearly translucent. There was a bit of welcome sun yesterday, in between rainstorms, but today, again, cold and grey. Friend Lynn is coming to stay with me. But our time together will be shorter than we'd thought.

Later. Flying home Sunday morning; made the arrangements with a nice Air Canada employee who told me it was nearly 4 a.m. her time, in New Brunswick. It was good to talk to a kind Canadian voice.

I need to see my mama.