Raining Cats and Thongs

Before I even begin this story, allow me to backtrack.

In August my sister Lisa and her husband came for a week to help me get on track with the baby. Every morning we'd get up and meet in the kitchen while Estelle was still sleeping and review how my night had been. One morning when I stumbled in looking for my tea, Lisa looked up from her coffee with pity on her face and said "How ARE you? Rough night?" In fact I'd had a great night and told her so. "But your underwear?" she whispered confidentially. She pointed to the balcony off the kitchen. "I put a clothespin on it for you."

You know, when you are a new mother & generally totally sleep-deprived, you really have to assume that when things said by other rational people you know and love make no sense to you, then YOU are the problem, not them. This time I'd had enough sleep to know I wasn't going crazy and she had just said to me what she had, in fact, just said to me. "Huh?" We shuffled out to the balcony in our robes and slippers. There, on my clothesline, was a pair of beige underwear that can best be categorized as "granny briefs". I looked at them. I looked at Lisa. She patted me on the shoulder. Her 6th-grade-teacher-voice-for-girls-who-meet-"Flo"-for-the-first-time-without-the-proper-supplies kicked in: "Did you have some trouble in the night? You can tell me.", the pity-face got more concerned. I had to really think for a moment. "Lisa, that is NOT my underwear." We looked at each other for 2 seconds, and then I got my brain in gear and logically looked up. There hanging on the line of the 6th floor balcony was the laundry of our upstairs neighbors, whom I have never seen and have no idea who they are, just know that it's an eldery couple.

We clapped our hands over our mouths in laughter and jumped back inside. Then you've got a dilemna. What does one do with someone else's underwear which drops from the sky and lands on your clothesline and you don't even know what the people look like? After a roundtable discussion with my somewhat-amused-yet-mildly-horrified-brother-in-law, we decided to put it in a non-see-thru bag, and at midnight left it in front of their door without a sound. The envisioned scenario of "knock knock, hello, I'm your downstairs neighbor and here are your granny briefs" just overwhelmed me, more so in French.
I have yet to see this couple, I have no idea who they are.

Flashforward to today: frenetically doing laundry preparing for the trip to the motherland. Do one load, hang it out, do another, hang it out... but wait, why is there a space on that 3rd row in between my biking sock and Thomas' pyjamas? I never leave a big space, of course, because I need all the space I can get (that statement applies to just about anything in Europe, and certainly laundry-drying-apparati). Oh fudge...... and so I lean over and sure enough, 4 stories down, there it is: my underwear, like a splatted dead animal, clothespin still attached. Lying on the back terrace of whoever lives on the 2nd floor. A black thong.

DANG. What's a girl to do? Why can't it have landed on the guy below us who is a professional oboeist with the Monaco philharmonic and we water his plants when he travels? Or the annoying adolescents on the floor below that who live in their own apartment because their parents live in the apartment across the hall from them? At least I wouldn't be embarrased to ask them for my thong. But who is on the 2nd floor? And why my black thong? Why not Thomas' jeans, or Estelle's little pink pyjamas. "Hello, I'm your neighbor from the 5th floor, so sorry, but I think my daughter's adorable pink pyjamas are on your terrace." Slides off the tongue so much nicer than "Hi, can I have my thong." which p.s. in French is "Bonjour, est-ce que je peux recuperer mon string?"

See, if I was living in America, this wouldn't happen, because I'd have a dang dryer, and even if I lived in an apt building, there'd be a laundry room where my thong could just anonymously have been left and I could just as anonymously sneak back to get it. Now I gotta go knock on a door and in my best French....... sigh...... you get the picture. Already I'm known as "la femme enceinte" (the pregnant woman), or rather, I was known as that. Now I'm "L'Americaine" (think you don't need that translated). The nice people refer to me as "la femme avec le bébé". Whoever is on the 2nd floor will now call me "Madame String". Dang.

So, not capable of the stamina needed to go down and do it, I opted for a photo for the blog.