Happy

All I can think about is scratching the upper half of my back, right below my neck. Why, you may ask-

Because I have a sunburn! A SUNBURN!

Normally, I would not be proud of this news. The girl who wears SPF 45 face cream every single day of the year, the one who recently invested in a wide-brimmed sun hat...

BUT - after 6 months of nothing but cold, rain, sleet and snow, I am ROCKIN this sunburn.

Parisians are finally alive again! I walked around my quartier in ballerines and leggings, enjoying the vide grenier, wishing I could buy this set of dishes and that old telephone from the fifties, then I plopped on a patch of grass read my book at Place des Vosges. It was such an amazingly sunny day that I  officially declared it "OK to Have Two Ice Creams Day".  As I meandered from the 11th to the Marais, I made sure that every street I walked on was sunny.

I also got right down to celebrating OK to Have Two Ice Creams Day - my first ice cream was mango, banana and coconut in a bowl, and my second was speculoos, chocolate chip and rhum raisin in a cone. Ahh, bliss.

I didn't even care that the kids playing in fountains were probably going to get some strange mutating diseases - part of me wanted to jump in and splash right along with them. 

Some American tourists were sitting behind me on the grass talking about their plan for the day. One turned to the other and said, "Everyone is just so happy."

Exactly - that's exactly right.

Vitamin D does Paris

Holy Moly Sunshine! Today Paris was SUNNY! I think I may have actually gotten the recommended daily dosage of vitamin D for the first time in uhhh...four months??!

People - I had to wear SUNGLASSES - real, block out the rays, ouch I'm squinting sunglasses! It was still only 7°C but hey - I felt rays of sunlight and that is a biiiiiig deal in Paris.   I didn't realize what a big deal it was until I tried to get a coffee on rue des Francs Bourgeois and found the ENTIRE Parisian population sitting on some terrace or another getting their daily dose of vitamin D.

I'm telling you - c'était fou! Sidewalks were so crowded that it was hard to walk and carry on a conversation with a friend and terraces were jam-packed making inside seating really the only option.  (The fact that it was only 7° made this not such a bad thing...).

I didn't realize how much I missed the sun...it glistened off the Seine today - that is how sunny it was.  Perhaps this is what I need for the current bataille against the catastrophe that is my face....

Can I order more of this stuff? Like on the internet or something?