FRENCH APPLIANCES

FRENCH APPLIANCES – they never work *I have spent years struggling with French appliances: ovens, washers, tea pots, electric stoves, fuses that blows. You’d think that my ONE day on vacation, the washing machine could just FUNCTION. He takes the kids to search for food and I shlep round the corner to the Laundromat. After filling the machines and putting in my five euros in coins I can’t get the washer to turn on. It’s hot, I’m sweating and no matter what I do, the machine wont start. Of course there is no attendant. Theres a mobile number scratched on the wall but I don’t have a cell phone and I don’t have much faith in a Laundromat attendant rushing to my aid. I decide to take the clothes out of the machine and try another Laundromat. I add the lost five euros to the 68 euros the hotel won’t refund. So far, Paris has cost me 73 euros for a hotel room I am not staying in a washing machine that won’t work. I finally get the machines open, pile the laundry into my bags and shlep it down the street to another Laundromat. 12 euros later and I’ve got two loads running. I head to the shopping street I know Hubbie is wandering with the girls, collecting picnic items. Miss Pudding is virtually starving. She practically reaches into the rotisserie at the boucherie to pull out a roasted chicken. So Hubbie stops at a bench across from the metro station. It is still sweltering. He pulls out the chicken and starts feeding it to the girls, like feeding little babies. They devour it. Meanwhile I realize I have to wait for the laundry, to toss it into the dryer, if we want it done before the Laundromat closes tonight. Or risk Hubbie heading to Bordeaux with no clothes. I head back to the hot Laundromat and wait for the washing to end so that I can pop it into the dryer. I’ve told Hubbie to go ahead and take the girls – he promised to take Petite to visit her old French school, requiring a metro trip (I would have avoided that and hung around our neighborhood). I told him to go ahead and visit the school (view it from the outside) and I’ll meet them in the park nearby that Petite used to play in daily. #France #Paris #appliances #travel #motherhood