Day 196: Failure is Cool

Paris, Day 25. I've been following Fail Blog for a while and I seem to have amassed a few fails myself. In no specific order, here they are:

Toothpaste Fail
I theorized at the tail end of Paris Part One that if I indeed committed to using a "pea-sized amount" from the travel-sized toothpaste tube, I'd make it to the end of the month. So, I merrily bought my teeny-tiny tube of Crest and have tolerated mediocre breath for the past 3.5 weeks in the interest of toothpaste conversation (and proving a point). Everything was going okay until an air bubble popped in the tube two days ago revealing that I AM SO NOT OKAY. That wasn't toothpaste Silly, that was Fresh Mint flavoured air! Now I'm shoving the bristles of my toothbrush INTO the tube opening hoping to scrape out three more days worth of minty fluoride love.

Fridge Fail
I don't know what it is about Parisian refrigerators, but they REEK. Something about the omnipresence of stinky cheese mixing with the seventeen kinds of mustards and pickles that appear to be obligatory in France makes for a positively eye-peeling odour. It got to the point last time that I was afraid to open the fridge. I'd have conversations with myself about how long milk could last sitting on the counter. This time, same deal. Only this time I have the feeling the stink is due to my poor chevre wrap job and not the bubbling, fermenting LIFE FORM formerly known as Grandma Producer's homemade Sicilian olives.

Flickr Fail
Boyfriend has been encouraging me to get myself a Flickr account. And by encouraging I mean asking me about it constantly until I finally submit. So, I get my technological shit together and sign up for a Flickr account. Then I get the gold-star by actually uploading my photos. Only all my photos are massively high-res for some reason and I ate through the entire 100 MB limit in a matter of minutes. So now there's no room for new photos until I get home and my Geek In Shining Armour bails me out. Don't even bother clicking this.

Garbage Fail
Dana's building has a locked garbage room. I have a fear of unfamiliar keys. It was traumatic enough getting into the flat when I first arrived, reefing on the lock for fifteen minutes before it released its grip, but this garbage room is Fort Knox. I cannot get in. I tried every couple of days for the first two weeks, but now I just walk it down the street, saying bonjour to passing neighbours and casually throwing bulging, dripping bags of personal trash into other people's garbage cans, lawns, flower pots, cars...

Classy Lady Fail
One of the gorgeous things about being in Paris is that no one ever calls or comes to the door. This level of peace and quiet lulls you into a false sense of security and so when the door buzzer went the other day, I freaked out. I ignored it. But it buzzed again and again and again until I opened the door. A young man was there to check the water meter. I was super-grubby-to-the-max in sweatpants, glasses and bed-head and Dana's bathroom is, in a word, bizarre. The walls are covered with chalk messages ("Dear Mike Hunt..."), weird magazine photos (naked chick, creep in a balaclava) and stickers ("This Is A Sex Ad"). Not to mention the pile of toilet paper rolls, plastic wrapping and (of course) tampon paraphernalia I've been meaning to get to.

Paris Day Fail
It's actually Day 27 today, not Day 25. I don't know how I've ended up in life counting two separate sets of days – Paris days and JOY Plan days – when I am so violently allergic to and terrible with numbers. Now, what the hell do I do? Go back and renumber where I went wrong? Skip ahead to the right day, leaving an unexplained gap? Abandon numbering altogether? Go back to high school and take Remedial Algebra? What?

Fail = Cool
One of my favourite shops in Paris is a little store in Le Marais called I Love My Blender. (How could you not love a store called I Love My Blender?) It's a mix of English books, French books, kids books, postcards, candles, journals and random stuff all falling in the Funny/Hipster/Cool category. I found this series of postcards with simple illustrations of children wearing t-shirts. On the shirts were written messages like: Save Me From What I Want, Failure Is Cool, Too Honest To Fake It, Look Out For Hope, Take No Shit. The kind of stuff I LOVE. Anti-mindless consumer. Pro-creative process. Pro-live it like you mean it. Glorious. I bought five. FOR NINE EUROS. 15 frickin' dollars for a couple of pieces of PAPER?! Aaaaa! I'm okay. It's art, right? I'm okay.