Farewell, Paris

I am hitting the road today, homeward bound!  No offense to Paris, but it will be so nice to get back…  I have a new appreciation for anyone who doesn’t speak the language of the area, and for those who suffer subtle snobbery in any environment.  For example standing in a line at a store and trying to make change with unfamiliar coinage, while the people in line sigh loudly, or roll their eyes as they glance at each other.  If I catch myself doing that back in the States I promise to quickly apologize!
A few people wrote to me over the past few days– I received the messages, but for the most part I cannot e-mail back.  I don’t know how to get Outlook to ‘inferface’ with the hotel’s wifi, and my computer struggles lately with every task– so I will take the time to log on to my mail server and write something only to have the computer suddenly crash and lose everything (!)    I will try to reply to people when I get back, but understand that I am far behind in several areas of work right now.   I am also trying to make a new resolution to work less, as I realized the past week that I no longer have the capacity to relax;   I don’t even know what the ‘relaxed me’ feels like anymore!  Since this is a ‘recovery blog’, I should add that the situation I describe is NOT healthy!
I received a plaintive note from ‘mifight’– I will write on Sunday when I get back, but please understand that I am just a one-man show;  I do not have attorneys or special connections, and I cannot help you get your children back.  I am posting this here so you see it–  the best thing you can do, when working with Social Services, is demonstrate recovery–  that means demonstrate a regular schedule, a job, a certain degree of composure, and even patience–  hard to do when fighting for one’s children, I am sure.  But the only alternative is to fight through the courts, and that is a fight rarely won–  it is very easy to make a person look ‘unstable’, where the more the person fights, the more unstable the person looks!  Again, when I return I will post your message without ID and see if anyone else has any ideas.
I am looking forward to seeing all of you– my ‘regular patients’– and to getting back where I belong.
To France–  Au Revoir!

PS:  I have to add this…. on our last day we went to the Catacombs, a network of tunnels that became the final resting place for thousands (hundreds of thousands?) of skeletal remains…  I will leave it to Wikipedia to describe the place better than I would, but what an experience…  to imagine the monks moving the bodies and bones to this location far below ground, and arranging the bones and skulls in decorative fashion (as they still are today)…  A ‘must see’, in my dark opinion!