Christmas came and went this year and it was a success! I loved having my mom here for her 36 hour layover. She came stocked with American goodies, fashion magazines, wine and her contagious laugh. As predicted, she sang the Jefferson's theme song when she saw how well our apartment building is maintained, we danced to Dominick the Donkey and The Waitresses, and in true tradition of my mother on the streets of Paris, she managed to annoy passengers of the metro; including (but not limited to) the man across from her who covered his ears to protect her Long Island accent from permeating into his soul. I guess he didn't appreciate my mom's announcement that the posters advertising Liza Minelli's upcoming concert in the metro looks like Angela from the nail salon's daughter. Every time we passed the poster (there are a ton up), she would point and say, "Look! Angela's daughta! It's Angela's daughta!" Or Judy Garland's, but hey, small details, I guess...
One tradition that I forget rears its ugly head every holiday is my annual bout with the stomach flu. Almost every year, it's been something. At an impromptu post-Christmas sleepover with Kitty in 1992, it was the attack of the garlic knots. The delivery boy, instead of sending us six, he sent us 6 orders, and the only logical thing for two 12 years to do was to keep on eating. Poor Kitty was forced to hang out out with my brother while I slept on the floor of the bathroom. 2004 blessed me with the "who told you to eat duck after being a vegetarian for 5 years" catastrophe. That was a mess. And of course, 2009, the famous dinner where I announced to MF's family that I'm allergic to dick, was the foie gras overload. I didn't realize how heavy it was...until the next day.
I eat fairly light during the year that when the holidays roll around, I let myself indulge forgetting the consequences of ignoring my sensitive stomach. The last few days have been spent watching our feast, well..come back up. It's been just awful.
The culprit? A thick lobster bisque that just didn't agree with me, bringing the entire cornucopia of our holiday treats with him on this journey to pure hell. I'm so disappointed. I can deal with being sick, but this really is not the week. The week between Christmas and New Year's is always so busy for everyone! I have my mother coming back in tomorrow, Seb's family coming into tonight from their London trip to show us pictures and have dinner that I won't even be able to look at, Christmas dinner part 2 is Saturday out in Fontainebleau....and I'm meeting my very first reader Duchesse in two hours and I look just awful. Pale, skinny and sunken eyes from sleepless nights doesn't really go with my whole look. I skipped on Heroin chic in the 90s. I don't know how I'm going swing it, but I'm going to have to. It's not often that I have such incredible people in Paris at the same time and I simply have to get out of this apartment! Good thing I have good make-up, powerful American toothpaste, a scarf over my mouth in the event that I'm contagious, and a good attitude. I hope you all had a lovely Christmas and that you didn't make the unfortunate mistake I did of over stuffing your face like I did!
