You know how sometimes when, say, you’re at a restaurant and you can’t figure out whether you want the pecan pie or the double fudge brownie sundae with almond shavings so you eenie meenie mienee moe to decide and when the moe lands on pecan pie you suddenly realize that what you really, really in your deepest heart of hearts wanted but were perhaps too timid to admit was the double fudge brownie sundae with almond shavings?

Well, I sort of felt like that today.

I was walking down Rue du Stand, towards the H&M street (it’s actually the main street in Geneva…main if you’re a shopper, that is…and you shop religiously at H&M...anyway its name changes every five feet, hence my ingenius name for it), with addlebrain, the editor of the mag that decided to dispense with en-dashes altogether (horrified gasp), and despite the fact that he always seems so utterly frazzled and caught by surprise by everything and mumbles in Australian gibberish at a pitch just below the human ear’s capacity for hearing, it suddenly became apparent to me that he was offering me the job of senior writer at the magazine. Senior writer at the magazine. I just like to savor that phrase.

And suddenly the world felt kind of set apart from the moment of the conversation, the people walking by in their pea coats and ogling the watches in the shop windows (honest!) and carrying shopping bags and scurrying to catch the tram and looking like the utterly dashing bankers a good percentage of them seems to be—and I suddenly got extremely cold feet.

This is the job that I had only several weeks ago (before I knew it was up for grabs) been gushing over as My Ideal Job, and now suddenly I could have it, and I wasn’t sure if I wanted it.

I was like, but how will I go surfing?—I don’t even like surfing, by the way. Nothing gets me in a snit like surfing. And then I was like, but what about the dog? ....Am I seriously making career choices based on my boyfriend’s dog?

Anyway, before you want to PUNCH me for flitting off to Europe and landing a fabulous job without even trying (hardly), let me tell you that there’s an extremely good chance that for reasons that cannot be disclosed even to you, O numberless reader, it won’t work out at all. In fact, I’m probably jinxing the hell out of myself by even writing about it, so I better shut the bleep up before some higher power decides to inform the French authorities about my unpaid library fees at the Bibliothèque de Genève when I try to leave the country (which actually would be a problem if I were flying out of Switzerland rather than France—whee!). But you never know. They could be conspiring to relieve me of my devalued U.S. dollars as we speak. Suckers!

By the way, I’m starting to feeeel it.

There's something about it that is dark and welcoming. You touch it, picking it up between thumb and forefinger. It feels delicate, yet substantial; its powdery residue settles stickily on your fingers, and its soft flesh gives way to your touch. It smells sweet and bitter and dusty; you can almost feel its roundness on your tongue. Your whole body craves to consume it.

You bring it to your mouth, take a bite, feel your teeth slide down its smooth insides and your lips closing around its bitter coating.

At first all you taste is sweetness. Your world becomes a sensation of sweet, yielding darkness inside the parentheses of its bitter powder finish. You have to take another bite, you have to taste more, you push the rest into your mouth, licking your smeared fingers, and feel its smoothness-inside-graininess hit the back of your throat, sliding down deliciously, sluggishly, and finally lingering on your teeth and tongue.

You must have another.

Another another another. You cannot imagine going on without just one more taste. Nothing this divinely intoxicating can rightly be so soon consumed—so irrevocably, disastrously over. It is an unthinkable cruelty to stop when every cell in your body seems to lurch from your body aching to feel that chocolatey goodness zipping through your veins once again...


Truffles, man. So good.

And then somebody had to remind me about transfats. I mean, honestly. Could you think of a worse time to bring up transfats? Damn Americans and their ungodly expertise in food additives.

Did I tell you I was going on the European diet? I read an article in the New York Times Magazine that pinpointed the differences between American and French attitudes towards food. Americans look at a piece of chocolate cake and think… guilt. Frenchies look at it and think… pleasure. And if you compare the dainty little Parisians with their ponderous American cousins, you can tell that more information about health does not equal more health. What’s the difference? To break it down simply, Europeans don’t snack, they never eat alone, and they enjoy what they eat. Hey, why didn’t we think of that? Maybe because we were too busy busting out a magnifying glass to check out the carb count of a tube of Pringles during the commercial break.

Anyway, I’ve been eating European style for the last month and I feel great! And once I learn not to snack or eat alone, I remain confident that I will be able to bend over and tie my shoelaces once again.

Home sweet home! (Possibly the ugliest picture you could find of a little town nestled in the French Alps.) See that big square building? That's the mall, where I live.

There were a lot of angry French and Swiss people on the road today.

Coincidentally, it was my first day out alone driving stick, and I’m extremely proud of my newly acquired proficiency. I kept telling myself it could be learned, considering that there are probably over a million certified morons who nevertheless learned to drive stick. It hasn’t been doing much for my ego that I don’t even qualify as one of them.

“You just have to feeeel it,” everyone says. Now is that just about the most irritating advice ever or what? I don’t want to feeeel it. Why can’t I just put my foot on the gas and go?

Learning to drive stick really gave me the opportunity to appreciate the genius that is automatic gear-shifting. Everyone tells me that once I learn stick I’ll never be able to go back to automatic, blah blah. But on the contrary, I feel my respect for automatic growing every moment I contemplate parallel parking on a steep hill.

Which I refuse to do, by the way. Just thinking about it makes me shudder.

As I wheezed into a parking spot by La Praille, a commercial center in the next town over from Geneva, Switzerland, the guy who had just parked next to me told me my car was sick. I demurred that my voiture was in fact très bonne, and that I was just learning. In retrospect, I think I shall make a habit of not admitting that to strangers.

I always cross back into France by the unmanned side road by the monstrously visible Buffalo Grill, a large barn of a hotel-restaurant that one often finds alongside French highways. Today, of course, as if it wasn’t enough that as I rounded a blind corner on my way back into France, nerves already frazzled by the dark and having had to pull out of a turn lane – on a hill – I had mistakenly entered because I’m not incredibly familiar with the road, I suddenly came upon a construction site completely blocking my lane. To be fair, it had reflective warning signs around it, the kind that light up when you’re about two feet away and are extremely USELESS when they’re around a blind corner. Of course I jolted the car to a stop mere inches from the dastardly thing, killing the motor, and then peeped timidly beyond it to see if any cars were coming the other direction, much to the chagrin of the motorist behind me, who scooted around me as soon as possible, beeping furiously. But it’s hard to take someone seriously when they’re on a motor-scooter. Of course then, when I could finally see the welcoming red glow of the G A U M O N T movie theater sign that distinguishes our building from the rest of countryside, and there should have been nothing between me and home but an open stretch of highway, of course there was a cadre of border guards with flashlights, asking if I’d made any purchases in Switzerland that day. God must have been on my side, because I managed not only to slowed to a halt within reasonable distance of the group, but I also answered in passable French that I had nothing of the sort, and pulled off at a respectable clip, if I do say so myself. Because I’m not entirely sure it’s at all legal that I’m driving in France. Or Switzerland.

By the way, my French is getting good. Watch out world; here I come.

Also by the way, is there seriously anybody in the world who cares about the difference between and en-dash (—) and a hyphen (-) (besides me, of course)? I desperately wish my concern weren’t so extremely marginalized. It makes me look anal. I was very disappointed to discover that the English-language magazine I so carefully edited – and believe you me, it was in dire need of my services – decided, after I patiently explained all the nuances of style and usage, to do away with the en-dash altogether! Can you imagine?

I’m sure you can.

On that note, not to sound too anal, good night.