Opulence

It's been a really busy time lately but also a really social time. I've met a really nice mom from Little S's school named Myla and we went to their house for a play date last week. Myla and her husband are lovely and I had in fact already noticed them because they are such a handsome couple. People watching outside of the school I'd been amused by them. They were like a sitcom family, so perfect. Her so pretty and ruggedly chic, and her husband somewhat dashing and polished and their little boy a small doll-faced blond, the kind of child you might imagine yourself having as you dreamed of having a family one day.

I felt very comfortable with her talking and being myself until I walked into their house and was a little taken back by the opulence. Their house is a palace, --three floors and five bedrooms and an office, a sitting room and a living room twice the size of my living and dining room. Myla is an interior decorator and they collect sculpture and rare furniture so the house is filled with things you might think at first glance you'd seen in Ikea, but were in fact on closer inspection the Real McCoy. I recognized things I'd seen in design books but I couldn't tell you where or which one. After I saw the house I began thinking of our house and all the broken tiles, dust and the shower in the kitchen and I felt a little out of place. But it turns out she's very nice and down to earth and interested in design so she knew our house just based on the exterior alone (touché) so I felt like I'd scored some taste points with her. In fact she's been so curious about our house that she hasn't stopped hounding me to come by for a visit but I've been putting her off until we can get through some boxes because right now it's just chaos and there is the Big Screen Monstrosity issue sitting in my living room. I'm not one to put on aires bit believe me if you saw her house you'd definitely feel odd about her asking to pee in your blue toilet with the white plastic lid. "Yeah, just lift the tank lid to flush it okay. Oh and wash your hands in the kitchen sink because the sink in there is broken (as we both stare down at the at the broken pipes jutting out)."

It must be my week for swanky friends because yesterday Little S and I drove to Paris to see my friend Sara, the one I met in Mexico. Sara lives in Neuilly which is the poshest section of Paris and the poshest part of France for that matter. The president lives in Neuilly with his wife the singer Carla Bruni and it's very chic to have a Neuilly address even if you only live in a tiny 75 square meter apartment like Sara. I had no idea about the Neuilly reputation until after I met Sara and started telling mil and others about my friend. Then Seb would always add "her friend from Neuilly" and everyone would roll their eyes. In fact sil got into a fight with Seb on the phone recently and used that as a jab "ohh, pff all your friends in Neuilly that you have SOooo much time for and not us!" or something ridiculous like that. I began to see that having a Neuilly address was like having a Beverly Hills or Uptown Manhattan address. Anyway I was really curious to see this Neuilly place and so yesterday even though the thought of taking the car to Paris and driving through tunnels freaked me out (note GPS doesn't work in tunnels!), I drove to Paris to see for myself what it was all about. It was pretty nice and the avenues were wide and tree lined like in all the nice areas of Paris, but it did have many average looking apartment buildings (Sara's for example--not a big deal except for the address). The difference was that there were more than your average number of Haussmannien apartments but not like in central Paris, these were ones with gorgeous iron gates opening up to large grassy knolls. What's was most shocking though was the houses you'd see here and there, --huge sprawling estates plunked right in the middle of Paris. Having a house in Paris, how much does that cost anyway? We know from studying the market all these months that in an average section of Paris a 75 square meter apartment will cost upwards of 400 thousand euros so the idea of a HOUSE in Paris isn't even fathomable. Otherwise there were lots of international types, rich private school kids dressed grungy on purpose (it shows), and the American Hospital where Angelina and Brad gave birth which is about three doors down from where Sara lives. I heard lots of English as I walked by the hospital and that was weird,-- people with midwest accents talking to people with Southern accents. Snippets of conversation, "I knooooow it is so cold and then I told him I said listen if you get transferred...." And when I got to Sara's apartment I said to her, "did you really have to go all the way to Mexico to meet an American? They're right outside your door!" And she laughed. Sara got her apartment by having some inside information through her banking connections. Since she's in finance she had some kind of inside track on the real estate market. Frankly though I found the apartment a little stark and the building was average. If she paid the market price for it, which I know she didn't, I would say it was wasted money but apparently it's a goldmine because of where it is. It's amazing what people will pay for being in the right location.

So that was my week of opulence. It's kind of fun to see how the other half lives and I'm enjoying it, but also missing my quaint little mountain life with my grumpy Savoyard neighbors. Things are so much simpler there and it feels more like me.