Sorting Hat Results

Speaking of Harry Potter, Micah mailed her overdue taxes (according to those tightwads at the agency) to the IRS with a Snape stamp.  She's a funny girl.

I started to do a post about what one should expect if they go to Paris with me.  People claim to want to, but they need to know what to expect.  I'm a pretty easy going person.  Flexible.  Accommodating to a fault, I've been told.  But, not so much in Paris.  The trip means too much to me, and is too expensive, to spend it with anyone who isn't interested in seeing what I want to see and doing what I want to do.  That's why I've gone alone the last two years.  I get to do exactly what I want, when I want to do it.  I'd love to have someone join me, if they want to do what I want to do, but my plans are too big a deal to me to substitute galavanting around, wasting time, looking at pretty gardens and shopping.

In 2005, I went to Europe with a school group that included my daughter. (This was before I became obsessed with French history, back when Paris was a vacation spot not a pilgrimage.) One night, we were all sitting around in a hotel room and they decided to have a Sorting Ceremony or whatever it was called in Harry Potter when they tried on the hat and it was determined to which House the incoming students would be assigned.  When my turn came, they shouted, more emphatically than necessary, that I'm a Hufflepuff.  I was, and remain, a little insulted.  Clearly, I'm a Gryffindor.  I'm still good friends with two of the students from that trip and, inexplicably, they still call and want to see me when they come to town.  That "inexplicably" isn't a put-down to myself though such observations are inevitably seen as such, resulting in lectures about how I shouldn't put myself down. It's not putting myself down, dammit.  I'm just saying I don't understand what they see in me.  I think I'm pretty amazing and am my own favorite companion, but most of my likable qualities aren't evident to others, but rather trapped in my head.  I just don't get what it is about me that makes other people, especially my children's contemporaries, want to hang out with me.

For whatever misguided reason, there are people, including Che and Courtney, whose friendships, mystifying though they are, I cherish.

Anyway, here's a picture of my daughter, Micah, and our friend, Courtney, in Paris 2005.

And, here they are last week when they were both home for the holidays.  Courtney told me that night that she wrote a paper about who she most admired, in college, about me.  I can never live up to her version of me.

And, with Che in Paris, 2005

And, Che, last week, when we had coffee as he passed through en route from CO to VA.  He told me I need to "throw a few 'bows" sometimes.  Basketball parlance for throwing an elbow - asserting oneself.  I'm capable of that.  Go to Paris with me and find out.  It's all about me, baby.  See "Follow Me" post for my travel partner requirements.