I didn’t bring a lot of clothes with me to France, having used my allotted suitcase space for more important things like books, two bags of peppermint Lifesavers, my laptop (complete with a stand, full-sized keyboard, mouse & mouse pad), external hard drives with my music & video libraries, cables to plug my laptop into the large screen TV I knew we had here in our Nantes home, and, as Melinda likes to point out, enough down pillows for five people.

Oh, on the subject of my pillows, Melinda claims they robbed her of space for her winter coat. In my defense I asked her to consider which is more useful. I mean I use my pillows year-round. Winter coats? They’re just used in the, well, winter, right? The argument that Melinda is cold year-round is irrelevant to my point. They’re still called winter coats, even when you wear one in July. Statements like, “Melinda, why are you wearing your winter coat in July?” or, “Melinda, that’s a nice winter coat you put on for Bastille Day” are beside the point.

Speaking of beside the point. So was that last paragraph.

The point is that Melinda and Chloe took me clothes shopping today after we had lunch at an Indian food restaurant. And just let me say how odd it is to order Indian food in French. But expanding on that would just create another “beside the point” paragraph so let me get back to the point.

Which is…

Chloe and Melinda have been telling me that the one pair of jeans I brought, the pair with paint stains on the leg, and the pair of heavy work pants Melinda got me just before we left are not diverse enough for the fine styles of France. So now I have a new pair of jeans, a pair of fancy pants, two sweaters and a scarf. That’s me in the dressing room, caught by Chloe trying on a sweater. Oops, I gotta run. I think I hear GQ at the door…