Just when you thought it was safe to go back to America...

Internet, I have a confession: 

When I got up this morning I was tired of being in Paris and ready to go home.

Actually, it is probably closer to the truth to say that when I got up this morning I was just plain tired. I wore myself out at the flea market yesterday but then did not sleep well last night. So when the alarm went off this morning I was less ready for another day's adventures in the world's most beautiful city than I was for another couple of hours of sleep and a big pot of coffee. There was no help for it, though. Another busy Monday was on the docket so I hurried out of bed, got ready, and hustled over to the Institut Protestant with plenty of time to spare for a coffee-and-croissant run.  Mondays are coffee-and-croissant days because I cannot break the habit of grocery shopping on Sundays but most stores here are closed Sundays. Ergo, no groceries; instead a visit to a local bakery for un croissant et un café crème à emporter, s'il vous plaît. That bakery is going to miss the USG European Council when we're gone, I'm here to tell you.

On the way into the IPT to put my book bag down before heading to the bakery I noticed that the men from J. C. Deceaux were changing out the affiches (posters) in the advertising display on the street corner. These posters are everywhere--standalone displays like the one on the corner, bus shelters, the outside of newspaper kiosks, etc. And all the displays seem to be maintained/managed by this one company, J. C. Deceaux, whose name appears somewhere on the display frame (Compulsive readers notice such things). The men happened to be taking down an affiche for the "La Mechanique de Dessous" exhibit at the Museum of Decorative Arts--the very poster I'd wanted to buy at their bookshop but no such thing was for sale. It has a black background with a beautifully lit photograph of a yellow velvet eighteenth-century corset with silver bows and paniers attached. The museum did not offer the same image even as a postcard, nor did I see the piece in the collection. Now here it was in a compellingly enormous format coming out of the frame right before my eyes--and still in great condition; those frames must be very sturdy.

I went up to the man taking the poster out and said, "Excuse me, sir, but what happens to the posters that you are changing out of the frames?" "They go in the trash," he told me--exactly what I expected/hoped for. "May I have that one?" I asked. "Bien sûr," he said, rolled it up for me nicely, and even put a rubber band around it.

And that, Internet, is when I stopped being tired of Paris. But on the matter of how I will get this huge poster home on the plane, let us remain silent.