Post-prandial Duracell

The problem is that the show is over, the curtain is down, Nando has left for a week on the Cote d'Azur, I don’t have any work assignments pending and no new business on the horizon, I’m housebound with el doggo (who has conjunctivitis in one eye and had a bout of diarrhea this morning . . . early) and don’t know what to do with myself.

When in doubt, when self-doubting, stuff yourself. Right? That is unfortunately easy to do in a post-Thanksgiving household with only one person. Sweets, chocolates, turkey, snackies, everything to pull me to the fridge. I feel sick.

Friday I was tired all day. "You are like Duracell, you keep going," Nando had said the day before. "No wonder your battery is low."

Crinkles on the Cote

As long as we were on the Côte d’Azur, we stopped to see Joan in Monaco. Yes she looks great, but her forehead is so . . . serene. It doesn’t crinkle. She shrugged. "That’s a small price to pay for the rest of it. Who needs forehead wrinkles anyway?"

"Me," I thought. The expressivity of my face is -- has always been -- important to me. That and my smile. Oh! What if I can’t smile as before? What if my smile isn’t framed by dimples anymore? It’s true that those dimples have turned deeper over the years and now run halfway up my cheeks -- sometimes when I’m not smiling. But they are part of ME.

Corniche

Nando and I passed part of that impressive project as we searched for Corniche Kennedy, found after a couple of wrong turns. Just as I had imagined, the Corniche is a wide boulevard overlooking the sea. When we had lived in the South of France, we traveled a corniche every time we got in the car; the Basse, Moyenne, and Grande Corniches are the connecting wires of the Côte d’Azur, and they all overlook the Mediterranean. The French word "corniche" comes from the Italian "cornice", or frame, and the three corniches brilliantly frame the splendid sea view beneath them.

About Marseille

Marseille is a two-hour drive from Cannes under normal circumstances. Our appointment at Chateau Sylvaine was set for 12:30 pm. but because we didn’t know exactly WHERE in Marseille it was, we left our hotel at 9:30 am. The autoroute is not twisty and turny because it doesn’t follow the coastline, as does much of the autostrada from Genoa to the Italian-French border, so we arrived in Marseille more than an hour early.

We had both visited Marseille before. It is the second largest city in France, boasts the country’s largest port, and celebrated 2,600 years of history in 2000. An American consulate used to be located here and it was the nearest place to notarize documents and the fastest place to renew passports. The classic joke about Marseille is, "What is the second language spoken in Marseille?" The answer: "French", in recognition of the large Arab-speaking population of the city.

Breathe after burning

The nightmare is over and I am back safe at home. I was there for all of it: in DC when the Pentagon was attacked, across the river from Manhattan on September 12 with the still-burning remnants of the Twin Towers -- like ghost limbs after an amputation -- filling the air with smoke, at Logan Airport in Boston in a situation of utter panic and confusion in one of the first flights to take off from that unhappy terminal.

Right now, something as self-centered and frivolous as a facelift seems like a sugar-coated compensation pill. I tried calling Dr. Delos’s office several times today but the line was always busy. So I faxed them, proposing the date of Wednesday Oct. 24, as I expected to be on the Cote d’Azur for a trade fair the third week of October. You have to keep going. You have no choice.

Canary on the Cote

Annick called me back today, a cheery-voiced woman who pretended not to be offended by my mutilation of her language. We understood each other well enough for me to set an appointment for September 14 in Marseille, the day after a business conference I’d planned to attend in Monaco. Done. I told my husband. “What took you so long?” he wondered. “I wanted to wait till I had a business reason for being on the Cote d’Azur,” I explained. I asked if he would be available to accompany me. He agreed readily and I wasn’t surprised. I already knew that his interest in my facelift was intertwined with his interest in cosmetic surgery for himself. I was his canary . . . and that was okay by me.

Conundrum

ARGHHH. No facelift is going to help this situation. Only sweat and tears. AND the time, the daily no-excuses commitment to regular exercise. How do I fit in an hour of jogging? And WHERE can I do it in this grey, industrial Italian town? And is my body able to handle it, after three years without running? I used to jog regularly when we lived on the Côte d’Azur. But I cut down my running schedule significantly after the dog attack, and then my right knee began giving me problems and I stopped running entirely. Yes, I walk almost three hours daily with my dog, but dog walks simply don’t firm and tone and burn off my tenacious fat layers.

It’s a chicken or egg conundrum. Do I talk care of my face first --- IF I decide that a facelift is what I want to do -- and then try to whip my aging body back into shape? Or shall I concentrate on my body and then, if necessary, if a well-toned body is not enough, set up an appointment to see about my face?