Small Things Matter

  The refrigerator I had in my dorm room has found a new life as the permanent resident in our Paris kitchen.  Its small size almost demands that I shop for groceries on a daily basis.
  So I haul out my aerodynamic shopping cart, uncool as it may be to pull one of those.  I don't care.  It carries a lot of things over the bumpy cobble stone roads I have to walk.
  It's overcast this morning as I roll my cart along.  I'm going to the closest market where the staff are Indian and speak French and English fluently.
  Here's a photo of the cheese section.  It's just 1/4th the size of the selection.

  I maintained self control.  We already have 8 different kinds of cheese in our refrigerator.

  Checkout time:  Every sales clerk I've encountered at a grocery store sits on a stool at their register.  You unload your own purchases.  When you're given your total, almost always you're asked if you have exact change or change?  When my total is 38.75 euros and I hand the clerk two 20 euro bills I don't expect to be asked for the exact change.  I do know the currency and can give her the exact change but I don't have it this morning, desolee.
  And then I pack my own groceries in my non-chic rolling cart and head out the door.

  Maybe I'm the only woman pushing a shopping cart who stops dead in her tracks to admire something and take a photo of it.

 

  Then I pass the statue of Benjamin Franklin I see every day.

 

I'm shopping for my groceries.  In Paris.  And I feel at home here.