She's baaaaaack... a.k.a. Mitrailleuse de la rentrée

Here's my gauntlet o' re-entry remarks...

• house kind of scarily icky upon arrival midnight Sunday but only in spots; I nonetheless stayed up til 4am cleaning bathroom, kitchen (esp. fridge, which looked as if someone had been inside it preparing fried chicken and spaghetti numerous times), floor, and pretty much all horizontal surfaces, after saying a long teary hello to the kits, that is - they seemed somehow comforted by my doing crazy late-night cleaning; I think they took it as proof that things were back to normal at the old homestead :)
• unpacked as of yesterday altho not put away exactly... most stuff is strewn on my bed and I go dig when I need something - thank goodness for the 3-day weekend coming up
• my feet when I finally got horizontal in the wee hours Monday were frighteningly swollen - I've never seen feet like that since after one of Mom's surgeries - I elevated them all day Monday and most of yesterday and drank lots of water and tried to avoid salt - as of yesterday midday they were almost back to normal and last night all was well - I have ankles again!
• can't figure out how to re-plug all the TV/vid stuff in - grrrr.
• my laptop went a bit bonkers the last two days in Paris and wouldn't go online - still won't here altho the other one is fine (except it's the slow one) - guess I'll be spending money on some fricking helpline tonight... :( once again, is it too much to ask for some nice my-age-kinda French guy who is cultured and doesn't smoke and has a little country house somewhere in Touraine and knows computers to have fallen head over heels for me in the last six weeks?!?! or better yet, not to have fallen head over heels for me even but simply to have picked me out as an impromptu charity project?!?!
• Chanel Coco Mademoiselle :)
• lots of pix of course and numerous France remarks leftover in a couple of blogpost drafts for you - guess that will be good in case I start posting less again like last year here in Clems*n - I can always throw a dose of France your way (and enjoy it myself à la fois)
• today is claw-clipping day as well as Frontline day - the kits are going to be sooooo happy with me in a few hours :)
• the good thing about going to the grocery in the U.S. after returning from France: you don't buy hardly anything because nothing looks good
• the good thing about having the munchies after returning from France: you make numerous trips to the kitchen and only eat something little on the 6th or so trip because all the stuff you're really craving is on the other side of the pond...
• the good thing about having a hankering to eat out after returning from France: you end up defaulting to something simple at home because once again you were craving the salade niçoise from Café Patios, or the faux filet du Café de la Grande Armée, or just a nice poulet-crudités sandwich from the little sandwich stand dans la rue St. Jacques...
• yeah, next time when I say I'm taking a duffle bag on the side to fill up on my way home from France, someone remind me that that is a colossally bad idea and I should stick to my old one-suitcase rule... probably partly to blame for the ankle issue
• nice last day of visits with friends: Chris, Samia & Bill, and Christina... I stayed for another glass of wine with the latter instead of doing any more shopping, then headed home to start sorting stuff
• indescribably happy that as I was trying to figure out how to get 15 kg of books (in three boxes) to the post office Saturday morning I remembered I had a roller suitcase!
• indescribably happy also that at the post office Saturday morning, working with the youngster who had no idea how to do overseas shipping but wouldn't admit it, there was a (quite pleasant-looking, to boot) middle-aged guy who did.
• not happy at all about the new "system" at French post offices where there are no longer windows or a counter but just a couple of people meandering around helping you at freestanding computers - no one knows where to line up, there is no room for filling out your forms, etc. - gahhh! whose idea was that?! the P.O. used to be one of my favorite places in France - so quintessentially French, and arguably the most efficient place to have to do business (at least in my experience) but now it is awful - plus they no longer sell boxes there except for express mail, dangit.
• am very happy however that the youngster at Gibert Jeune told me about BHV (le Bazar de l'Hôtel de Ville) which did have boxes, of a sort anyway, and which is a truly wondrous store - as Christina put it - it's the closest thing they have now to Samaritaine, which is long gone, sadly - probably a good thing I didn't find out about BHV until my next-to-next-to-last day; next year anytime the students can't find me I'll probably be at BHV.
• crazy amount of work to do, as usual - some new, some leftover - remember when I used to say that certain people in Tucson were addicted to stress even tho they seemed always to be unhappy about their overwhelming workload, etc.??? please tell me I'm not one of those people... lots of choices in the last year tho have kept me firmly in the totally stressed completely overwhelmed club... I hope it really is situational and that in another year or so I will be breathing easier and seeing various profits (not just monetary) of all this - granted Paris time was already a big profit, work notwithstanding :)
• off home - s'posed to stay and work in the office all day to force myself to actually work - but the one person who was to stop by did so this morning plus I just realized I think I left the AC on higher than I meant to (turned it up to cool off the house this morning and meant to turn it back down)... there's a chance I already turned it back down, but I also just don't want to stay here... of course.
• salut.