I'm moving in with a man!

     Schools out. Yeah! But the bigger news is that I am moving into an apartment with a man! First time for me!

     Little twist to it though, he's 73.

    Remember I posted a while ago that I wanted to go back to France this summer? Well its on! I called some friends there and asked how I could go about getting myself a writers garrett and how much it would cost in Paris, and it turns out that it is ridiculous! Pretty much anything on the short term was over €1,500 a month. Thats $2000ish. And that is for a studio/room in a not so good neighborhood.

     That would be stupid, worth it, but irresponsible. My budget is €3000 for everything, the whole summer ($3800). I've got an $1400 round trip flight, on Finnair via Helsinki! And heres the beauty, my friends know a man who has a 2 room apartment in the 14º Arrondissement where Hemingway, Henry Miller, Fitzgerald, TS Elliot, Alice B Tolkas and Gertrude Stein famously lived and wrote!!

55 Rue Boulard, food vendors across the street in the park a couple times a week!

     €350 a month (X 2.5 months) for a nice safe quiet room and full use of the apartment!!! I'm going to cook myself, no money for eating out, but what I really want to do is discipline myself to write at a set time and for a certain number of hours or words each day.

    For fun, I get to walk around Paris! I'll probably get a Metro pass too, but thats about it for spending. Food, Wine, and shelter and being in Paris should be a plenty rich experience.

    My landlord/roomate is a fairly recent widower, so we have something in common, but comes highly recommended. He was a civil engineer and has lived in many different places, Morocco for a while and Algeria, and Tahiti. He speaks English too and is in good health and people say he is fairly mellow and will enjoy my company. I plan on getting him talking and maybe I can use some of his life in future characters.

     My Grandma is worried he will hit on me, and that I will certainly get robbed if not raped if I am out in public after about 4pm, but those are risks that I take in San Francisco too. Well maybe not men hitting on me!! Secretly I sometimes even encourage that! And imagine a grandpa aged man hitting on me?!!? Actually I can! What I would like to experience is it done so well that I would consider it. I wonder if age and experience really can win over youth and vigor? Don't worry, I'm not going to encourage it there! But the thought of it...could be a novel? What was that old movie with the kid and the old woman? Wouldn't it be nice if relationships were primarily something other than a good match of physical attractiveness? (Note to Greta: something to explore).

     I don't even know the man yet and her I go off imagining! Could be too that he is grumpy and doesn't like the sound of my fingers on keys for hours! I'll have to be Chloe the mouse and scuttle around tying to be inoffensive! Imagine! Me inoffensive? Ms Blunt who laughs like a horse!

     So...I leave July 4th. Probably return mid September for school. Or maybe never be heard from again, vanishing into the world at large, so far from where I am known. Nah, gotta a book to write! Maybe this time even published by someone other than myself!!

Love

♥♥♥