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Dear Nancy,

I am writing at 3am from an apartment on Blvd Morland in the 4eme arrondisement of Paris. Joyeux Noel! The boys and I were jet lagged and we all went to bed @ 10pm. Call it excitement born of major change, Christmas, being here, or all of these, but I shouldn't be awake right now. But then nothing has been 'normal' about this trans-Atlantic sojourn. I am not as sleepy as after previous crossings: didn't even stink or feel grimy after 18 hours in a car, on planes, in airports, on a bus, and à pied that it took to get me to this moment where I sit up in a sofa bed (the boys graciously made up the living room as my private bedroom) in the pre-dawn Christmas Day dark tapping out an email on my otherwise non-functioning US cell phone.

It took a long time to get myself here, and though the ambivalence of my recent mood initially colored my reaction to this city--which at first looked like the typically quaint, cobbled, architecturally marvelous Major European City I've seen all my life, I think a few hours of rest have begun to disperse the indifference.

It was probably a good sign that that after I stepped off the bus from the airport at Gare de Lyon, and started wandering in the wrong direction, the first person I 'excusez moi'ed' for help was a young woman who 1. Was hot 2. Had lived in Manhattan for six mois and spoke perfect English 3. Taught me how to say 'Bonne Annee' 4. Lives on the rue where the flat I'm in is located 5. Walked me there. 6. Gave me her # and email and said if I needed anything to contact her. The boys waved at me from the balcony of the flat when they saw me strolling up the street, and had a good surprise seeing that the lesbian was the one who'd picked up a hottie and scored digits five minutes into being in gay Paree. Très bien.

After settling in and marveling that we were all finally in a place that had been an abstraction for so long, drunk though we were on the surréalité of it, the boys and I headed out to the Left Bank for dinner. We were all starving and not picky, so we ended up at a diner near a metro stop called Le Cafe Metro where a big butch dyke named Rocky served us croque monsieurs, omelettes, bread and wine. The food was so-so, a four star so-so. The wine, of course, was delicious, table vintage though it was. Afterwards, we wandered along the Seine, took pictures of Notre Dame all lit up, noted this boulangerie or that, heard bells, saw a drunk pissing in a perfect arc in the street. In short, we began our immersion into the city of lights in the uncanny calm of Christmas, a calm broken only by the squeal of children on a balcony, who were delighted by the shimmering sparkle of Roman candles in their small fists...