2017 + some gossip

Well, the New Year has come and gone. After thinking we wouldn't really have any plans, we ended up throwing together a last-minute NYE party for nearly 20 people.  It was a great time, even if I was slightly cranky that all of the smog was blocking our view of the Eiffel Tower at midnight.

I've been thinking about it these past few days, and I don't really have any solid resolutions for 2017.  With the exception of the US political situation, 2016 was a pretty good year for us, and I will be perfectly satisfied if 2017 continues along the same path.

And in today's episode of karma is a b*tch, before I left for the US, I made a short trip to Bretagne for work.  Fab, my ex - as longtime readers will remember - had contacted me after the US elections results were announced to basically ask WTF.  We started chatting a bit, and I asked if he was going to get in trouble for talking to me, and he was quiet for a second before very sheepishly admitting that he had gotten divorced this past summer.  My first thought was "Ha, serves you right!", and my second though, which I voiced, was "That is sad for your daughter".

In even sadder news, he also mentioned that his father, a dear man with whom I was very close, had had a stroke. He is unfortunately mostly handicapped now, and needs a nurse to come three times a day to take of his daily needs. He also can't speak really say anything besides Oui or Non.  So I'd had him on my mind for quite some time when this Bretagne trip came up, and I decided to ask if I could stop by the farm to see him.

It was pretty surreal to be driving through the winding country roads that used to be my home.  When I pulled up to the farm, Fab came out to great me, and brought me to his 'house', aka a very sad-looking trailer behind the main farmhouse.  My face must have shown my surprise because he said "Alright, you get five minutes of laughter and then you have to move on".  It was pretty obvious that he too was aware of the irony of the situation.

He explained that was living there because he had lost a lot of money in the divorce due to the fact that he had brought his wife into the family business, something myself and everyone else in his family had strongly advised him against, and so he had no choice but to live there.  He also lost his organic certification after an inspector discovered they had been trying to cheat by using non-organic feed (as a side note, this is one of the reasons I don't often buy organic in France - in my experience, most of the farmers are doing it purely for the extra money it brings in, not because of their convictions - which means they cut corners and make substitutes wherever they can). 

I felt pretty gratified actually that he was able to acknowledge that I had been his moral compass, and he admitted that there is some truth to the saying that behind every great man is a great woman, and that he had unfortunately been too weak to push back on all of her suggestions. We had a long chat, and he apologized very sincerely for what he had done, and said it had weighed on him every day for the past nine years. 

I was also surprised with how much he remembered of our life together.  He asked very specific questions about several of my family members and co-workers, not to mention names of places we had been, etc, many of which I had long forgotten about. Although I guess I have a horrible memory in general, and can barely remember what I blogged about last year, so I shouldn't use myself for comparison lol.  It was very obvious though that he missed speaking English, contact with other foreigners and our regular trips to the US.

But this is getting a bit long, and I haven't even gotten to the best part yet, so I think I'll continue on with the rest tomorrow!

PSA

I posted this on Twitter last night (well, as much as you can post in 140 characters), but thought it might be worth posting it here too.

C says there has been a drastic jump lately in the number of foreigners getting robbed around the Abesses/Sacré Coeur area. There is one group of five young men who usually corner a foreign couple and make them empty their pockets and give them their ATM card pin code. The others just plain old pickpocket tourists. But the end result is that foreigners are now filing by the dozens into the police stations of the 18th arrondissement.

At least two of these stories have a happy ending though. Undercover policemen caught one of the offenders red-handed in front of Sacré Coeur and they found the wallet of an American woman (among others) in his pocket. She hadn't yet filed a report anywhere, so C tried calling the American Embassy to see if she was registered there. She wasn't, so he put the wallet aside just in case she decided to file a report in the next day or two (the other option is to send it off for evidence, but then you can't get it back).

He was telling me the story over dinner last night, and I said "Do you remember her name? We should look her up on Facebook". A few clicks later, and there she was! I sent her a message and she replied back a few minutes later saying that it was her, and that she had just been to a different police station to pick up her (empty) purse. Case closed!

The funny thing is that while hunting through the garbages of Sacré Coeur for her own purse, she came across the purse of someone else and also found and returned it yesterday through Facebook. Talk about good karma coming back around to help!

(Now if karma would only heal my sore throat in time for my next work trip....)