ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Ive missed setting the table. Ive missed the water decanters and wine bottles at every meal. Ive even missed the personalized napkin rings. But when I was there, I missed Southern summers. I missed the Fourth of July. I missed oversized, overpriced lattes. And now of course, I miss and dream of that fantastic espresso machine. But loving both places, loving both lives is all part of it.
To les Vladesco , I thank you for offering me that other life for just one brief moment. I owe you all much more than this. Lonie, I had a dream the other night you were a ballerinayou were the best one on stage, bien sr . I love all of you very muchand your family in all corners of the city and country.
To my Svengali, Dwight Silverman, thank you for naming this book, first the blog, then allowing us to carry on the title. Thanks to all dear friends at the Houston Chronicle to Stephen Weis and Jeff Cohen who urged me to pitch the blog at all; to Scott Clark who gave the stamp of approval; to my old team (heres where I write Deanna Marie Jewell Barrett) and to Kim Michell. Ill always love the Chronicle thank you.
To my editor, Danielle Chiotti, who edited my book alongside planning her wedding, thank you for risking so much with me. Thanks to Kensington Publishing and Danielle alike for offering me the contract and for hours of dedicated, tedious work. Thanks to my agent, William, who advised me both inside and outside publishing. Thank you to my friend Dan Limke who so kindly indulged me for my first ever photo shoot.
To Nitty, thank you for introducing all of us to les Vladesco , and thank you for introducing me to nearly everything. You always take care of me, always indulge me, and then somehow still love me despite my vanity and abrasiveness. I thank all of my family and friends who have supported me through this. I no have notion of loving people by halves... My attachments are always excessively strong. Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey.
I am most recently indebted to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette . To David Brown and to John Mobbs, thank you for caring about me beyond work. You know I want to make you proud, and despite immense frustration and my sick attitude many days, you know Im grateful.
Id also like to thank a few of my first teachers in writing, though there is a lifetime of work ahead of me, and Ill probably remain eternally intimidated by you. I think of all of you often, more than I ever let on. Thank you, Lindy Nelson, Melissa Hayhurst, Dr. Louise Montgomery, Gerald Jordan, and Miller Williams. Some teachers have discouraged me, but you are the reason I want to keep learning.
Above all, thank you, readers. Readers of the blog, you were such an inspiration. And readers of this bookwhether you liked it or hated it, thank you for reading. Cheers and bon courage.
Chapitre Un
I t was 2 a.m. and I lay wide awake, counting the days and hours until my plane left for Paris. Three days and sixteen hours, to be exactwhich I could determine neither good nor bad at that moment. This could have been for a number of reasons, really. I was high on double lattes as usual, ode to Starbucks, but I wasnt reacting with the normal incessant tapping and fidgeting. In fact, I wasnt moving at all. I felt paralyzed, emotionless to the core. Tick, tick, tick was all my mind could hear, counting the clocks in my head as if an internal bomb were about to implode me.
Months ago, I had woken up at age twenty-three to realize I was living a life Id never plannedone Id never even wanted. Everything I knew was wrongwho I thought was, where I thought Id go, what I thought Id do. All those dreams Id had as a little girl, the pining and praying and wishing and hoping, had faded from slightly recognizable to non-existent sometime during and after college. I didnt know what to feel or what to do. So I changed it all. In a matter of one week, I stripped myself of a job, an apartment, a community, and any familiar environment in an effort to regain what I had lost. Though at that time, I wasnt sure what lost was.
Paris was the fresh start, the place to begin the search for the life I had been missing. But, not being independently wealthy, I had to find a way to travel there without breaking the bank. I had heard about au pair programsmy sister had actually lived in Paris as an au pair for one year. I visited her there, met the family, stayed in their house. We had a great time. It seemed an easy enough set-up, with maximum reward for minimal effort, so I explored the option for myself. As luck would have it, they needed a summer nanny, they being the Vladescos les Vladesco Alex and Estelle, whose three children, Diane, 14, Lonie, 11, and Constantin, 7, I agreed to keep for six weeks while I lived in their home. An au pair in Parisit was a good place to start.
Les Vladesco lived right in the centre ville, just near the lArc de Triomphe, which meant that a daily walk on the Champs, kids in tow, would become part of my regular routine. The whole thing sounded foreign to me, no pun intended, considering I had spent the past two and a half years reporting to a cubicle every weekday morning. The anxiety from quitting my job had only begun taking its toll when, two weeks after my last day in the office, nothing was direct deposited into my checking. True, losing ones source of income can rattle the most sound-minded of folks, but crazier stillId done it voluntarily.
For nearly three years, I worked in ad sales for the Houston Chronicle . It was what most people would call a good job. Good company. Great people. Fun industry. Looking back, now that I was unemployed, I had to mention the additional perk of health insurance. (Though Id heard that if I should require medical assistance during my summer abroad, the one good thing about French government was free doctor visits.)
Perks aside, I wasnt inspired. Sure, I liked certain things about the Chronicle job. I even loved certain things about itespecially dressing the part, which was the easiest way to mask a deep-rooted dissatisfaction with my life in general. On my best days, I would avoid the truth in my never-fail black power suit from J. Crew: a dashing wool gabardine duo combining the four-button blazer and pencil skirt with daring back slit. And the shoes were twice as important. How I relied upon my darling and oh-so-sleek black Stuart Weitzman stilettos, so much so that my closest co-worker referenced them in her goodbye note to me: Wherever life takes you, may you always walk with Stuies on your feet, she wrote. She was the one who inducted me into the Stuart Weitzman club, you see, and into all the other couture clubs beyond. Before her, I didnt even know how to pronounce Louis Vuitton.
But the rest of the timeas in the actual eight hours a day I was paid to work and not just prance the streets of downtown, albeit under the faade of a great wardrobeI felt like a prisoner in my own cubicle. One afternoon as I sat watching the minutes on my computer screen clock change from one to the next, it occurred to me there could be more satisfying life quests. I was in need of drastic change. So I started plotting my escape plan right there from my jail cell of a cubicle.
I figured to really walk away, I needed a clean start, back to the basics, back to school. I wanted to be a writer. So what was I doing in advertising? I had deceived myself into believing if I took the advertising job at a newspaper, I could segue into editorial. Nothing was further from the truth. I was building a great resume for a sales career, but writing had nothing to do with it. It was time to change that. So I decided to go back to school to pursue my masters in journalism.
