What I Ate for Breakfast Today aka Ghetto Living in Paris, Part Deux

I’ve got blogstipation, big time.

I have plenty of writing projects and topics. In fact, that is the problem. There are so many topics I want to write about that they are backing up on me now, and I am paralyzed as a result. I cannot seem to make a move to post any *one* thing when twenty things clamor to be written about. It has built up to a high level of frustration and I’m about ready to pop.

I have decided, therefore, to just sit and write something to get a post up, since it has been way too many days since my last post.**

Happy Holidays?

Christmas decorations at the Forum des Halles Shopping Center in the 1st arr. Paris

The past few years I have felt decidedly more Grinch-y (like he was before his heart grew three sizes too big) about Christmas than Cindy Lou Who-ish, or Scrooge, Post-Ghosts.

The way I see it, Christmas in the States from the time that I was a kid in the 1970s, has become “Cashmas,” which Urbandictionary.com defines as:

a celebration of materialism in which its celebrants attempt to flatter or impress relatives, friends, and acquaintances with the extent of their purchasing power. (The “power to get”.) Cashmas co-opts signs, symbols, and sympathies from other religious holidays of the winter season to mask its foundation of conspicuous consumption.

Maybe for some there is still either a genuine religious component which makes the season more for them, or they have an authentic love for All Things Christmas from the decorations to the foods to the ambiance that is created by such a warm and cozy holiday amidst the darkest days of the year. For me?

Christmas has felt like one big pain in the ass for a lot of years now.

I Am…

… exhausted.

But first, a photo from the weekend:

Place des Ternes, 17th arrondissement, 14 November 2009

This is the post that I started yesterday, but am finishing today. If you recall from the previous post, I wrote that yesterday I had the BEST conversation with Karen, someone I have met in the city through this blog (!). We learned a lot more about one another’s Paris stories on the phone yesterday and tomorrow we have plans to go on an Adventure. Stay tuned for that. In the meantime, here is what I began yesterday and finished today.

I am on day 16 (17 now, as I post this) of NaNoWriMo after taking two days off this weekend. I have a ton I can write about, I got the grocery shopping completed by 1 pm this afternoon (a record for me, I think!) just so I could sit down and write and not be interrupted by thoughts of , “Oh, I have to do X!” or “OMG, I must do Y!” It is now 3 pm, I do not know where the past couple of hours has gone, but know that I now have to spin out about a thousand words an hour over the next three hours to keep up with my postings for the challenge. (This, of course, was pleasantly interrupted by Karen, and if she reads this part, I do not want her to feel the interruption was not wanted. As I told her on the phone, the whole reason I created this blog was to LIVE LIFE better, to potentially meet new people through it, and to go and have experiences about which to write! Her interruption is furthering the goals of this blog’s original premise and to not talk with her would have been an serious and flagrant act of jumping the shark. So I am most pleased I did not meet my word goals yesterday. I am still ahead of the game, I am sure I will more than make up for it today). [A little later: BOY HOWDY. Did I ever. LOL.]

All this, and I am reacting to foods again today, just as I was over the weekend.