madame coutarel

well, quite a lot has happened in only three months. let's bullet-point the main events.

-i now live in chamalières, france, in a quaint apartment with a large back yard where i've planted plenty of vegetables & can hang my laundry to dry in the summer sun. our neighbors have a modest castle complete with a moat & drawbridge & i get to wake up to see baby swans swimming around under the bridge.

we've modified the garden since this picture, but just to give you a main idea of our backyard.

the castle. if you look close you can see water, but i don't think there are any swans in this picture.

our bedroom. i'll take more apartment pictures soon & post them for you to see.

-i'm learning spanish, chinese & arabic. hopefully these will help with my travels in the future.



-oh, and how could i forget? i got married.

no ceremony (for now). just married at the city hall.

first dance (no music).

the new coutarel family.

first time back at the apartment as a married couple!!

we are now officially mr. & mrs. rémy andré coutarel. pretty frightening. i am a madame now, which makes me feel very very old.

we went on a makeshift honeymoon, which was really just riding our bikes around the region for two days, but we saw a lot of beauty in those 150km.



























for now we're settling into our life in france. i'm hoping to be able to work soon enough so we can really start saving up for our big bike trip. i miss everyone back home a lot, but life here is really good, too. i can't wait to have a big ceremony in a few years where everyone can celebrate our love together!!!

hope all is well back home! ;) love from both of us in france...

Type rest of the post here
♥!

celia katherine kelly

I was asked to help with an article the University of Washington's daily newspaper was writing about Celia; a tribute, I was told. Of course they could not use everything I wrote. I wanted to put the rest out there in the universe. I can't say this to her, but perhaps putting the energy out there where others can see it... if someone else reads this, maybe she'll feel how proud of her I am... Maybe not. But I'm willing to try.

She came to me in a dream yesterday. I have a friend, had a friend, I guess, is the better terminology, Robert. He died in a car accident a few years ago. When things aren't going so great, he comes to me in dreams and with just his presence I know everything's going to be okay. Well, Celia called me up in my dream yesterday and she asked if I could do her a favor.
-Of course, I replied. What is it?
-I need to you watch the children, she answered. Please. While I'm gone.
I hesitated.
-Watch the children?
I had no confidence in my ability to help keeping watch over loved ones.
-Please, she urged. You can do this. It will only be for a short while.

I drove to her house and walked into a living room full of laughter. There before me was Omari and a little Sheena, a little Jacqueline, a little Melissa. A little Rose and a little Erin and a tiny Emma. Some of them babies, some of them toddlers, all of them full of life. I was absorbed by their happiness, captivated, could not take my eyes from their smiling faces, and when I finally turned around to say goodbye to Celia, she was already gone.

I'm still unsure what this all means, but I know it has something to do with us learning, not from her death, but from her life. It may not be much, but behind this heart is the tribute I wrote, from my own heart, to my little cousin. May you rest in peace.

(for grandma & grandpa, that means click on the little heart here to see the full post with the rest of what I wrote...)




I was told the other day that the name Celia means "Sweet One". While my own research can only find "Heavenly" or "Musical" or even "Blind", there could not be a more simple, pure or accurate description for my late cousin. As someone said at the service the other day, one could not meet Celia without forming some kind of relationship with her.

I am sure everyone she touched has their own version of the story of her life. Here is mine:

Celia was born in Spokane on November 4, 1986, a rarely-fussy bundle, often calm, always smiling. As her older cousin (I was born in February 1985) I was fascinated. I didn't have any other siblings at this point, and considered her almost a little sister.

Though she was born in eastern Washington, she spent most of her life in Seattle, attending Mt.Baker/Lakewood Co-op Preschool, Whitworth Elementary, Meany Middle School, and Garfield High School, where her love of the ocean truly began. This is how most people know her today: an avid science-lover and conservationist, enthusiastic about marine science and driven to help educate others not only about the wonders of the deep blue sea, but also about people's own influence on the environment. In fact it was cause and effect itself that drove her research at home, during study abroad in England, on the R/V Thomas G. Thompson research cruise to Hawai'i last fall, and on the same ship again this March in New Zealand.

Of course how I remember her is long before her love of the ocean began; riding bicycles through the evening sprinklers at Washington Water Power in Spokane, trying to catch minnows and crawdads in the Spokane River, collecting smashed pennies and bits of aluminum along the train tracks near our grandparents' house. Our families used to go to Spokane every summer for a few weeks vacation, and Celia and I always got to go for a week or two by ourselves before everyone else. I always looked at her like this little sister. I was almost two years older than her, and back then that counts for something. Always felt the need to protect her, look after her. She was just so... little.

I still remember her face the first time we caught crawdads in the river. We were young and awkward, maladroit, and it took us hours to collect exactly three in an old rusting Folgers-style coffee can we had borrowed from our grandparents' house. We ran home ahead of our grandpa (the "supervisor", if you will, but more like the "instigator", really), excited to show our grandma our discovery. Of course now we all know about Celia's love for anything that comes from the water, so I can only imagine her reaction thinking back on this day. Our grandpa was a kidder; every day was April Fools' Day. He would joke about everything; how he wanted to eat us for dessert, how if we kept making those faces it would freeze that way, etc. But he was so damn convincing you never really knew if he was telling the truth or not!! So we run in through the back door and put the can on the kitchen counter, run upstairs to change or wash up or something someone told us to do. We come back down the windy stairs towards the kitchen and something smells good! Something indeed! Imagine the horror on little Celia's face when she realizes that Grandpa is cooking up the very crawdads we had just laboriously collected from the river.

She was always thoughtful, little Celia. One day we went out, as usual, to ride our bikes in the cool late evening air, over to Washington Water Power where their sprinklers came on every night just before dusk. My grandparents had been yelling at me to put some socks on, that riding with shoes & no socks was dangerous, but being the stubborn little girl I was, I did not listen. Celia didn't say a word, but she had that look. She didn't really care either way, I don't think; just wanted to get on over before the sun set and we couldn't see anything anymore. But she gave me that look like I should just listen to my grandparents, as if she truly believed they knew best. I didn't listen to anyone back then, so sock-less I stayed, and we sped off in the Spokane dusk, knock-kneed and ragamuffin little girls we were, arriving at the sprinklers just in time, riding and running and soaking and laughing all the while. Soon enough the sprinklers turned off, the street lights came on, and it was time to head home. Being the show-off I was, I wanted to impress my little cousin by jumping my bike off a high sidewalk curb. What a mistake that was. My slippery shoes slipped on my slippery pedals, all wet from the sprinklers, and my foot slid right off that pedal with my ankle sliding right in to the wheel of gears. I still have a scar just above my right ankle, and I still remember Celia, sweet as ever, helping me home and helping explain to Grandma what happened; didn't even say "I told you so" once.

She was thoughtful in other ways, too. We used to walk up and down the section of train tracks a few blocks from my grandparents house almost every day. Sometimes with Grandpa, sometimes not. Always searching for treasure. We used to pick up all the little pieces of junk that had fallen from open train cars, or had been put on the tracks and then forgotten by other young souls. Flattened pennies. Cool looking rocks. But our favorite was little pieces of aluminum that had fallen out of passing cars as they went over switches or rough spots of track. We collected them daily and kept them safely hidden somewhere in the house. And every day we'd dream about how some day we'd be rich. You see, most little girls and boys have lemonade stands at some point in their life. Of course we participated in those, too, but they never really proved to be as lucrative as we thought they would be, and we were determined that our other innovations would be a true success. You see, instead of lemonade, we wanted to have a stand selling all that we collected in our daily walk up the tracks, "treasure" we would call it, but of course it was nothing more than junk. And I remember trying to come up with a name for our stand. "Celia & Chelsea's Stuff." "CC's Silver." And we finally agreed upon "C² Train Treasures." Of course who wants to buy little bits of dirty aluminum? And we never got around to it anyway. That old can of "treasures" is probably still in a dusty corner of that house somewhere. But I'll never forget those summers back when we were young.

Then you grow up, you know? You get to high school and family isn't as important. For me at least. I was always busy with a million sports and clubs and after school activities. We still saw each other; she was deeply involved in theater for three of her four years at Garfield and her junior year was the Stage Manager of the school musical. If you know anything about theater you know that the Stage Manager is by far the most stressful and difficult job of the production. By God did she do an amazing job.

I still remember sitting in the audience after the curtain fell. All the cast members came out and took their bow. And then they called her to the stage. I didn't even recognize her. She looked so... luminous up there. Brilliant. Radiant. Confident. Absolutely thrilled with the outcome of the event. She looked so grown up. I realized that my baby cousin was no longer a baby. I had never been so proud.

Drama was certainly a passion, of course. She was a member of the Garfield Drama Club, and was also involved in productions with a technical theater club called StageSoc when she studied abroad last year as one of "the first of hopefully many students to cross the pond and learn in a different country" (her words) at the University of Southampton in England. But her true love was the ocean. Hundreds upon hundreds of hours of her adolescent life were spent within the walls of the Seattle Aquarium, first as a volunteer in the Teen Naturalist program and then later on as an adult volunteer. She spent six years of her 22 years with us donating more than just her time, and touched the entire community so deeply that the Seattle Aquarium itself donated the facility and staff to put on the beautiful celebration of her life this past Thursday.

This past fall she participated in a research cruise on the R/V Thomas G. Thompson to Hawai'i, and upon her return to the Great Northwest she would not shut up about her excitement for her trip to New Zealand this coming March! The nature of the trip was to collect samples and aid in research for her senior thesis project. Each person on the ship had come up with a different topic, had created a project and proposed research that would be accomplished on the ship in the waters to the east and north of New Zealand. The ship left from Christchurch on the east side of South Island, and headed north, bending around the northern tip of North Island, and allowing Celia (and a few others on the ship) to focus their research and collect their samples in the Kermadec Arc, which is a series of volcanic islands near Tauranga (just off North Island) in New Zealand. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kermadec_Islands) Specifically, she designed her project to research the levels of iron (Fe) and manganese (Mn) in the water near the volcanic arc, focusing on iron. Celia explains in the topic summary of her proposal that iron is very important to the ecosystem of water habitats as it is "limiting on biological productivity". She goes on to explain that this biological productivity is important to understanding the carbon cycle, and therefore crucial to understanding acceleration in global warming and climate change. (http://students.washington.edu/celiak/topicsummary.shtml) (http://students.washington.edu/celiak/generic.shtml) After collection of water samples, Celia planned to analyze them through onshore analysis conducted by the Murray Lab after the ship's docking in Auckland.

As Celia says herself in her post on the UW Oceanography blog of this research cruise: "Now for the next adventure: actually writing a paper! However, we need a little break to recover. At least for now you can find us exploring the wonders of New Zealand. See you back in Seattle!" The plan was to spend some time with her great friend Marie Salmi, also a UW Oceanography student on the New Zealand cruise who also studied abroad with Celia in England and the University of Southampton, doing a bit of site seeing on the mainland. The plan was to meet up with an acquaintance from the UW who was currently studying abroad in Auckland, Jessica Gowan, who could hopefully show them the town.

The last two posts on Celia's Facebook wall (I know it sounds lame to use Facebook for research, but what can you do?) before she died were from Jess and are as follows:
hey celia, my campus is off symmond street. its not too far away from the main city centre. we were thinking about leaving on the 13th after our classes, so sometime around 4 or so, and then heading out to taupo. we were going to rent a car, which are quite cheap ($49/day) and if you split it it can be really cheap. we were thinking beach at first, but we all decided on going to taupo instead, which is really really close to rotorua. you guys may as well start your road trip earlier and then cool off in auckland before you fly out? some of them were going to go skydive (i've already down it) out there. you should give me a call when you get into auckland, my number is xxxxxxxx. talk to you soon!! March 11 at 3:51pm

hey celia, yes 1:30 sounds pretty good! i'm on campus now, i missed a phone call earlier today and i had a feeling it might've been you.. so sorry, i had it on silent! we actually have not made any arrangements to go to taupo for the weekend, as of yet. we still need to find a rental car and stuff... i don't know if we'll end up going this weekend afterall. hopefully we can work something out soon. looking forward to seeing you/hearing from you soon! March 12 at 4:44pm

The accident happened mid-afternoon on Sunday, March 15 north of Taupo on State Highway 1 in New Zealand, which translates to mid-afternoon on Saturday, March 14 here in the States. We were notified Saturday evening of her death.

The cause of the accident that left Celia dead and seven others critically injured is still "under investigation" by the police in New Zealand. This is as much as we (as family) know about the accident:
The car, a rented Toyota, was driving on a long, straight section of the highway with Celia, Marie, Jessica, Jessica's boyfriend, and one other passenger. The road was dry and the weather was fine. It was the middle of the day. A Honda with three men approached coming from the other direction. The Toyota (Celia's car) momentarily lost control, veering into the lane with oncoming traffic (remember that in New Zealand they drive on the other side of the road, and that the driver is located where our front passenger is). This means they veered to the right. The driver then over corrected, veering sharply left, trying to get back into their lane. Celia was located behind the driver (which would be the back right seat in the car) and therefore when the Honda hit the Toyota, it was literally a direct hit, just behind the driver's seat, killing Celia instantly.

One of the cars then caught fire. A car passed just after the accident and a father and son pulled some of the other passengers from their cars in an effort to keep others from dying due to the car fires. Jessica and Marie, as well as the other girl passenger, were airlifted to Rotorua Hospital. So was the driver of the Honda, a 28-year-old man from Putaruru "where he was in intensive care in a serious condition". Jessica's boyfriend was treated on the scene. The two passengers in the Honda were taken to Taupo Hospital with moderate injuries.

Marie is still in the hospital with a fractured pelvis as well as a few other pretty serious injuries. Last I heard she was able to take a few aided steps with help from nurses, but I'm not sure if this is true of not. Her mother flew over sometime last week, but we haven't heard from her yet. We are hoping someone can provide us with more details as to why the car suddenly lost control, to help us better understand Celia's death. Was the car defective? Did an animal run in the road? Was someone on a cell phone? Was the road in poor condition? The police haven't provided us with anything that can help us make sense of it all. I physically understand why she died: she was unlucky enough to be sitting exactly where the other car hit. But why did the accident happen? The problem with serious accidents like this one is severe head trauma can cause loss of memory, and as far as the girls in the car remember "the car lost control, we woke up in the hospital". This is our waiting game. We'll see if anyone ever follows through and finds out the truth of the matter.

Celia's death (and young deaths like this in general) are tragic for many reasons. Seeing someone with such potential, with such talent, at the prime of their life, doing what they love to do, pursuing their dreams, to see all of that taken away in an instant, it's tragic. It's unjust. It's unexplainable at times. And it seems incomprehensible.

I heard a quote once from an episode of Six Feet Under where a child dies that goes something like this: "When your spouse dies you are a widow. When your parents die you are an orphan. But what do you call it when you lose a child? I guess that's just too awful to even have a name."

Celia will be greatly missed. She was one of the kindest, honestly gentle souls I had ever met. She was brilliant beyond words, deeply innovative and inspired almost everyone she interacted with. I only hope she knew how proud I am of her, how much her family and friends love her.

Someone wrote on her wall:
in africa they believe (and i believe this too) that you don't really die until everyone forgets about you. and for that reason, they keep your skull after you pass as a way to be reminded of who you are. well, that's a little much for us but i don't think anyone is going to forget about you, Celia, ever. i think you are going to live forever.

It's true. From the hundreds of posts on her Facebook page and blog, to the 300 plus people who showed up to celebrate her life at the Seattle Aquarium on Thursday, there are many many people who have been touched by her life. And we will not forget her. Her death is tragic, yes, but her life is inspiring. As Sue Donahue Smith, Association of Zoo & Aquarium Volunteer Administrators (AZAVA) Mentor and Celia's first "boss" said at the memorial on Thursday night, we should all look to Celia's life for inspiration. "If you go doing what you love most, you were a success," she said teary-eyed during her tribute. May we all follow in Celia's footsteps and chase our dreams...






Links to articles and information about her life &/or the accident:

http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/2263876/Father-son-save-lives-after-fatal-crash
article from a new zealand news site

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2008902414_kellyobit22m.html?syndication=rss
article in the seattle times

http://newzeelend.wordpress.com/2009/03/23/another-american-killed-in-nz/
new zealand blogger's blog about the accident and the danger of new zealand roads

http://blog.seattlepi.com/seattle911/archives/164735.asp#extended
article in the pi

http://dailyuw.com/2009/3/30/oceanography-student-dies-new-zealand-car-crash/
article in the uw daily

http://bonneywatson.com/_mgxroot/page_10775.php?id=648695
obituary on the funeral home website

https://courses.washington.edu/ocean444/2009/archives/370
the uw oceanography research blog (celia's post)

http://students.washington.edu/celiak/
celia's oceanography homepage, with links to her research and project proposal

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=celia+kelly
some random thing on urban dictionary that pops up when you google her
♥!

the good ol' us of a.

so i know it's been a while, and i don't have much time to elaborate, but suffice it to say that this good ol' us of a is incredibly beautiful. remy & i are on a grand tour of as many national parks as we can stand, and i am blown away. the list will only grow from here, but so far we've seen:

shenandoah national park (virginia)
little talbot island state park (florida)
st.andrew's state park (florida)
falling waters state park (florida)
mustang island state park (texas)
big bend national park (texas)
guadelupe mountains national park (texas)
carlsbad caverns national park (new mexico)
great sand dunes national park (colorado)

there is only more to come and i will describe our adventures in more details as soon as i can. let's just say i am in awe of the natural beauty of this world, and each day we travel just makes me want to travel every day for the rest of my life.

we most certainly do live in a beautiful world.


♥!

the waiting game

time is a tricky thing.

we get so caught up in planning our future and analyzing our past. focusing on what we'll do tomorrow and talking about yesterday. we forget that these are abstract concepts that exist no where but within our minds. it will never be tomorrow just as it will never be yesterday. it has always been and always will be this present moment. the eternal paradox of time is that now is all there is.

so how do you deal with it? the notion that time does not flow around us like sand in an hourglass, but rather that we move around a stagnant time, embellishing it with numbers and fancy clocks. when you know that you can move neither forwards nor backwards but must always remain in the same place, for all of eternity? that becoming fully aware of the present moment is the only way to face life?

it used to be a comfort to me. whenever i found my self in a precarious situation i would simply remind myself that whether i liked it or not, eventually it would be a different day and i would no longer be in that moment. while bored at work, while hard pressed for time during finals, while stuck in the mountains in taiwan on a scooter during a typhoon, i could trust that even if i was not still alive to appreciate it, inevitably this wretched moment would pass and some other events would take its place.

of course it works both ways. while enjoying the sunset on sharp cliffs overlooking the spanish mediterranean (and knowing that i got there powering myself on my bicycle); while staring down at the valleys of the north cascades from a mountain peak; while standing under the largest buddha made of gold in a temple in mountainous taiwan; while sleepily lying in my lover's arms - i know that all of these are only moments, small pieces of fabric in the elaborate quilt of time. i know that they will pass and i know that i will never experience that moment ever again. it's part of what makes life so beautiful.

but this time it's killing me.

i know this day will come. i know that it's nearing the end, and is fast-approaching. but i simply can't understand my lack of control. why can i not simply will today to become tomorrow? why can't i meditate my way to next wednesday evening? because i've been waiting five months for this waiting game to end and the last five days are proving excruciating. this is pure and simple limbo and it's driving me insane.

i watch the second and minute hands change. i see links on my chain of days disappear. i watch days on the calendar crossed off, but it doesn't feel any different because he's still not here. 80 days or eight, it's all the same to me. i'm stuck in this waiting game and i'm not sure if there's even a way to out. is patience ignorance or facing time with grace? i'm not so sure, and knowing an answer won't make me get to wednesday any faster. so i suppose i'll just hang on to this moment and let go of my attempts to control it, watch the seconds dissolve and shapeshift their way into others. and soon enough, as has always been true, today will be a modified tomorrow and my prince will come.


♥!

(culture [shock) therapy]

major difference #1: everyone is nice.
the most startling part is how friendly people are. or i suppose, how friendly people seem to be. everywhere i go i am greeted with a smile. walking up the street to the grocery store (which, by the way, is open twenty-four hours a day... weird concept) at least three or four people ask how i am. who are these people? i wonder. and why the hell are they talking to me? a stark contrast to the stoic faces of strangers back in france. suddenly when face to face with my own culture, theirs makes so much more sense. i don/t know these people. they don/t know me. when they ask me how it/s going do they even care? i know the answer. i work three jobs now. i probably come in contact with at least a hundred different people a day. i ask all of them how they are. and for how many of them can i honestly say knowing the answer to my question might have a significant effect on my day? probably about three.

have i become cold? what is this feeling? it just makes so much more sense to only share a smile with someone you care about smiling with.


major difference #2: popularity.
it/s a major driving force in high school and we pretend it dissolves after graduation, but we all know that it is highly prevalent in every aspect of american society. in neighborhoods and workplaces and pta meetings. there is the social heirarchy and while it doesn't always directly correlate with financial status, it usually does. i did not fully comprehend the extent of this web until returning after being away from it all for so long. a few days after returning to the states i went to visit my father in his new office building in downtown seattle. when the doors opened on the way up the elevator and one of the successful attorneys cut everyone else off (including all the women) i literally laughed out loud. priorities here seem way messed up.



major difference #3: everyone is pressed for time.
this one goes without saying. we all know it. yet we all still manage to victimize ourselves and keep the vicious circle going. time is money. in a restaurant, our servers want us to get in and get out so they can get more tables and make more money, which is fine because we want to leave anyway and go buy more expensive things. at stores we can/t ever take time to peruse and get immensely irate if we have to wait a few minutes in line. in the car we are furious at everyone around us because they are not going as fast as we want to. patience is a trait that i learned (painfully at first) abroad. i need to remember to try to hang on to it here.



major difference #4: no bread, no berets, no cigarettes.
no one walks around with baguettes in their purses or cigs constantly hanging out of their mouths. apartments don/t reek of stale smoke. and it is normal to be a non-smoker as opposed to going directly against the status quo. as stereotypical as it sounds, i miss the old french men walking around with their canes and berets with a baguette tucked under the arm and a constantly burning cigarette in their mouth. it added something asthetically. and i miss bread in general. and croissants. real croissants that is.



major difference #5: everything is new.
walking through my neighborhood in france i passed many buildings and churches and mosques and storefronts that are centuries old. cobblestone streets and crumbling stone walls are part of europe/s appeal. the colorful doorways and window shutters that we see try to capture in pictures against a backdrop of such aging villages is part of what makes us long to visit, spend time, live there. and yet here in the us of a if any building is more than twenty years old we completely tear it down and start all over. i don/t quite understand. why don/t we just construct our buildings right the first time and then appreciate how styles may change as time goes on? isn/t that what life is all about? measuring the work of today against the work of yesterday? isn/t that how we measure progress? tearing every accomplishment to the ground in an effort to "rebuild and make it better" prevents us from seeing exactly where we may make improvements and we ultimately end up regressing. but then again our society in general is focused almost entirely on consumption, and rebuiding does require consumption of new materials. i still strongly believe that our most beautiful modern cities pale in comparison to the small villages of europe. but that might be just me.



of course there are other differences. the fact that i now would consider myself an adult. the fact that all my friends live in different cities around the globe. the fact that the love of my life is 10,000 km away and that i cannot say for sure the next time i will feel his embrace. the fact that i am planning a 50,000 km bike trip around the world. the fact that i am done with school but still feel that there is oh so much to learn. the fact that everyone (myself included) uses automobiles far too much. the fact that i wake up and fall asleep each night feeling terribly alone. but these are all new feelings and i still need time to digest. to readjust.

change and differences and exposure to new things is the best part of this life and i am eager to continue. i cannot wait for my next adventure. three months in taiwan; a year in france; what will the world present me next???

Type rest of the post here
♥!

the (US) of a

so i bought a plane ticket from new york to seattle yesterday. for august 5.

i still have no idea how i will get to new york, but i`ll figure it out.

my emotions are out of whack right now. i am extactic to see people i have only been able to love from a distance for so long, but scared to love someone i care so deeply about from so far away for so long. i am extatic and then suddenly burst into tears. i`m scared. deeply scared. love is a frightening thing.

can i do this? i`m a strong girl and i know this, but am i strong enough to deal with more distance?

why do i do this? love people so intensely and then leave them? is this what i`ll do my whole life? i`m growing, i can feel it, and this time i know i`ll come back to once again wake up in his arms, but it doesn`t make leaving any easier.

Type rest of the post here
♥!

wanker in the stairwell (you want to read this, trust me)

it/s saturday night. kate is in the middle of helping me with my biggest klepto feat yet: steal a mattress, bedframe, sheets & pillow from the bedroom of a friends/ apartment without him noticing. don/t frown at me for stealing. this was a challenge.

you see, lately whenever i get drunk, i end up stealing something from someone. it started out as mistakes. on st. patrick/s day i was simply too drunk & just walked out of the bar with a glass of beer, not really thinking about it & woke up the next morning with a glass in my purse. i end up with people/s lipstick & sunglasses and i mean i only have one group of friends so it usually gets returned to its owner but it started getting bigger.

it began with stuff around town. kate, sam & i stole flowers from the memorial by place gaillard because my apartment needed sprucing. we had joked about it for a while. people kept putting flowers there for two days, then taking them away & replacing them with new ones. giant displays of flowers that were still perfectly good when they got dumped. so we waited until the second night, went and did a little pre-dumpster diving, with our justification the fact that while whoever that memorial for is dead, i am very much alive and can actually use the flowers. my apartment was lovely for two whole weeks.

then came the cobblestones. callie & i decided that the not-quite-finished cobblestone street that was being redone in bourges needed some sprucing. bellingham-style. we wanted to take a few cobblestones, paint them bright colours with messages like "hug your mom" and "respect your elders" and "smile". rainbows & peace signs & the like. but of course we were drunk when we decided this, so instead we ended up scattering cobblestones around the city & waking up with a few still in our purse. how you can forget about a few cobblestones in your purse is beyond me, but hey, it was callie/s going away party & we were celebrating. let/s just leave it at that.

don/t worry, mom & dad. i am not stealing cars or robbing banks. it is harmless pranks that happen when twenty-somethings get drunk in foreign countries. or actually, i/m going to go ahead & go out on a limb & say when anyone gets drunk anywhere. but i/ve become a bit of a legend known for my ridiculous drunken feats. this, however, is not the point of the post. it is merely the preface. background info to help you understand where we/re at when the story starts.

and where we/re at is a challenge. a dare, if you will. a friend of mine, ruairi, is moving back to ireland this week, and has been trying to sell his bed for a few months now. apparently this proved impossible. no one responded to his ads. in the paper, in the city/s magazine, online. no one. so he challenged me to steal his bed. i gladly accepted and looked for the right moment to do my work.

the right moment was saturday night. ruairi had his going away party. first at our bar, les freres berthom (also the bar remy works at; well, will work at until the end of this week when he will be switching jobs to hopefully have a more normal life), then later at ruari/s. gethin had already helped me drag the mattress, sheets & pillow the km or two to my apartment, but the bedframe was still there and we were looking for an opportunity to slip out with it.

that opportunity came with the drunken decision to head to the only bar where we like to dance: l'apart. with everyone preparing to leave, kate & i had an out. gethin distracted ruairi, and we somehow managed to get the bedframe out the door & down the windy stairs to the cobblestone street below.

this is where our story really starts.

so by now it/s around 2am & we/re on the little street i live on, cracking up because we/ve dropped the bed frame for the millionth time, when this sketchy guy passes us on his bicycle & asks if we need a hand. we/ve already passed this guy once a while back & he was on foot. a little odd, but whatever. we politely decline, watch him round the corner, and bust out laughing once again.

we finally pull ourselves together & get the bed frame to the front door of my apartment & out of nowhere we see the sketchy guy once again emerge from the shadows (this time on foot) to ask if we need a hand. once again, i say no. we/re almost at my front door, but thanks. no biggie. but then i drop my jacket on the way in the door & he follows us in to give it back to me. i thank him and gesture for him to leave. he walks out the front door but it doesn/t close all the way. not really my biggest concern at the moment as we have a large bed frame wedged in a very small hallway and somehow have to wish our way up a winding stairwell, too.

half way up the stairs (rather tricky in the middle of the day with two grown men = quite the challenge with two drunk girls) kate starts whispering loudly for me to look down at the bottom of the stairs because the sketchy guy is back. i see him (sort of) through the bars of the stairwell (i/m above the bed frame, we/re wedged at the part in the stairs where it awkwardly bends, & kate is below the bed frame fairly near sketchy guy), yell down to him that we really don/t need a hand, but thanks anyway, and ask him to please leave. kate keeps making motions & sounds suggesting she/s freaked out & then says "umm, i think he/s giving himself a hand down there..." i laugh & tell her she/s a funny one. "no, chels," she urges. "seriously, look."

i look and to my complete disbelief this guy has his dick hanging out. oh but that/s not it. he is happily wanking, just you know, jacking off in a stairwell watching two drunk girls try to push a bed frame up the stairs.

"euh, qu'est-ce que tu fiches la?" (umm, what the fuck are you doing there?) i yell down at him.

totally nonchalantly he replies, "bah, je me branle..." (uh, i/m masterbating...) and then looks down at himself jerking off as if i am a blind idiot for not seeing clearly what he is doing.

"dégage! va-t-en! franchement, c'est dégueulasse, si tu dégages pas j'appelle les flics!" (get out! go away! seriously, that is fucking disgusting and if you don/t get out i/m calling the cops!)

he pauses, comes in his hand, looks up at both of us, shrugs, says "d'accord" and walks out the front door, slamming it behind him.

there was a moment of what-the-fuck in the stairwell for a while there. kate & i were rather disturbed. "what a wanker," kate said. "literally." we both laughed nervously, but it was a bit too too early for jokes of that sort. we awkwardly struggled our way up the rest of the stairs & got the bedframe into the living room. but the whole master bater debacle sort of undermined the great feat underway and made sitting on the finally-assembled couch a tad anticlimactic, so to speak.

i haven/t seen his face since, thank the sweet lord. he wasn/t hanging around the apartment after that, which i probably wouldn/t do either if i was him. and don/t you worry, if i do see him, i will be sure to remember him. and then i will find out where he lives & up the ante, making my next challenge to steal his hands. i won/t let him go around asking young innocent (or not-so-innocent) girls if they need a "coup de main" ever again...


♥!