Passports and Poo - All the Levels of Shit in My Life

For the month of June I will start work on Fridays at 1pm instead of the usual 9.30am.   I decided to take advantage of that morning block of time this past Friday to apply for my very first French passport.  Despite my extreme fatique and strong desire to stay au lit, I got up at 7am so that I could be at the Prefecture de Police in my quartier at 8.30am - exactly when they opened to the public.

I power-walked my Birkenstock-clad self all the way up the boulevard only to find this:

Translation: Today we are no longer not taking any passport, drivers license or ID card applications. EXCEPT by rendezvous. Take a rendezvous please. Thank you.  Pick ups and information only.  And people who have rendezvous.


Oh no they didn't.  But oh yes, they did.

I wasn't going to let these Frenchies who couldn't even make a decent informational posting ruin my plans of applying for a passport! I immediately went online to the Prefecture site to try and make a rendezvous for later in the morning.  No luck- the earliest one in my quartier was for June 24th!  ps - I'm flying in early July.

I called the Prefecture and asked the nice (amazing I know!) receptionist if this was the case for all of the Prefecture offices - wasn't there anywhere I could go today???


You can come to 12 quai de Gesvres, metro Chatelet, right now if you want to apply for a passport.  


I hardly had time to say merci aurevoir before I was running out of my apartment and onto the metro!  I was in and out of there in under an hour (not without dealing with a rude social worker who told me that my hands were too sweaty for the finger print machine and did I have a Kleenex to wipe it off. Ps - did I mention that the French Prefecture makes me extremely nervous?)

But - I beat the system and will be the proud owner of a French passport in 10 to 15 days. AND they are going to send me a text when it is ready to be picked up. How's that for technology?

I was so happy with my French system whooping that I decided to treat myself to lunch. I went to Pomme de Pain and got a sandwich, strawberry tart and sparkling water and cozied into a booth to eat. It was bordering on ridiculously hot outside and there were strange birds flying all over the terrace tables, so I had decided to eat inside.

Little did I know that the birds had made both the outside and inside tables their stomping grounds...not even 5 minutes into my meal, a small bird flew over to the chair across from me, took a little poo on the seat back and flew away without a second thought.

See the white speck? Bird poo. At Pomme de Pain.  INSIDE the restaurant.

I contemplated yelling at the restaurant staff about their lack of bird control and the birds' lack of bowel control but instead I just finished my meal, wiped off the poo and went about my day. After all, Paris is one big merde - dog merde, human merde, pigeon merde, rat merde. What's a little bird merde thrown in the mix?