For the last two years, I have tried a one word affirmation, as inspired by Gretchen Rubin’s Happier podcast, instead of new year’s resolutions. The first year, it was Read, which did spur me on to make regular time for reading. Last year, my word was Light, which became Léger/la Lumière in French.
Again, this method worked well for me. I redecorated my bedroom, lightening up the color scheme, and I’ve enjoyed it every day since. I unloaded the weight of a carload of things I no longer needed in The Great Purge of 2017 (I kept my husband, but he was a bit worried for a while).
My quest to lose weight was tougher. Despite some early success, no matter what I tried, my weight continued to creep up. In late summer, I found out that I had grown a rather substantial kidney stone that had to be surgically removed. Once it was gone, the weight fell off. The weight gain was really fluid retention due to a malfunctioning kidney. The lesson I learned there was that instead of beating myself up, I should seek medical advice if my body starts acting strangely. The DASH diet and I are now good friends to try to prevent the small stones in my other kidney from growing to the same mammoth proportions.
This year, I have selected SUFFICIENT, or SUFFISANT (soo-fee-zahn), or suffisante (soo-fee—zahnt) when referring to a feminine noun. How do I see applying this to my life? Well, for one thing, I really don’t need any more clothes. In my overly analytical way, I have been keeping track of what I wear on a monthly basis. I found that I typically wore five items of clothing in each major category most months (for example, five blouses, five sweaters, five dresses) and about ten different pairs of shoes in any given season. Yet, I have far more than five (or ten) seasonally appropriate items hanging at my disposal in any given month. When tempted to shop just for the sake of novelty, I’m telling myself that my wardrobe is more than suffisant to meet my sartorial needs.
I’m trying to be more reasonable about what I put my Todoist app for any given day. After all, I can only accomplish a finite number of tasks, and when the list is suffisant, I schedule the new tasks for a later date.
But suffisant also applies to things I need to do more of. For instance, part of my new anti-kidney stone lifestyle is supposed to be 100 ounces of fluids a day. One. Hundred Ounces. I have never once made this goal, peaking at about 64 ounces, and yet, the dietician and physician’s assistant both said that this was the most important change I could make. So, I’m going to be more diligent in tracking my fluid intake on my Fitbit app to make sure that I’m drinking suffisant, but I have significant doubts about 100 ounces.
I’m sure that as 2018 unfolds, I’ll find many more ways to apply suffisant to my life, but these ideas are suffisant for now (couldn’t resist, sorry). All the best for a more-than-sufficiently healthy and happy 2018.
The Everyday DASH Diet Cookbook
Next, is a 
Finally, a purely sentimental recommendation. Read a French translation of a childhood favorite. I recently finished 
When I first started spending time in Paris, I used to love to visit a bookstore in the Marais called Mona Lisait. It was famous for coffee table and art books at discount prices, dust, and creaking floors. But the Marais has gotten increasingly chic and eventually Mona Lisait shut its doors.
This year, I noticed a chic new bookstore in the Marais and it took me quite a while to realise that I was standing in a completely transformed space that used to be Mona Lisait.
The new store, 
A few minutes away from Hôtel Joke, the hotel that I recommended in my last post, I found a lovely little restaurant, La Petite Sirène de Copenhague. My husband has a bias in favor of restaurants with white table cloths that rarely leads us astray; he would definitely have approved of the immaculate linens here. The chef, Peter Thulstrup, has been serving excellent meals for over two decades inspired by his homeland of Denmark.
His evening three-course menu costs 41€ and it was really very good. I had the restaurant to myself when I came at 7 pm, but by the time I left, the charming restaurant was filling up with regular guests and fellow travelers. Thulstrup gave the same warm welcome to all, whether in French, English, or German. I wonder how many other languages he speaks?
I love seafood and that’s the specialty of the house, so I was definitely in the right place. I had salmon terrine as the appetizer, tuna for the main course, and sorbet and strawberries in a crisp crêpe for dessert. I forgot to take a photo of the cheese course before I ate it! It was the most delicious blue cheese I’ve ever had with a prune and a little red onion. If you’re looking for a terrific dining option in the 9th, I highly recommend La Petite Sirène.
The last several weeks have been crazy busy due to the usual back-to-school frenzy and a rather gigantic kidney stone that had to be removed. One of the things that I had wanted to share with you after my trip to France was a recommendation for an inexpensive, yet very pleasant hotel in Paris. And no, those two words don’t have to be mutually exclusive.
I arrived earlier than the scheduled check-in time. After a short wait in the breakfast area (where snacks are available free of charge all day long), I was given the keys to a bright, modern room that was decorated in the hotel’s witty style. There was a fridge that was fully stocked with free water bottles and soft drinks and it was restocked every day. The bathroom had a tub and shower combo to help soak away my jet lag. My only complaint was that there was a spot of mold on the grout that should have been zapped away. A continental breakfast was included, complete with yogurt, fromage blanc, cheeses, cold cuts, fresh and dried fruit, cereal, eggs, breads, pastries, coffee, tea, juices and probably several other things I’m forgetting. Best of all, the room was really quiet and AIR CONDITIONED during a heat wave.
In addition to all the in-house freebies, Hôtel Joke is one of a group of sixteen Paris hotels owned by Astotel. Guests have the right to use the refreshment area in any of the other properties. All of the 3- or 4-star hotels are on the Right Bank of the Seine. They gave me a card with all of the addresses and I did pop into one on a particularly hot day when I had run out of water. It was a nice perk.
I’ve written about 
I’ve started my own little rentrée ritual since moving into our new home three years ago. I go room by room, shelf by shelf, drawer by drawer, and box by box and decide if all if the accumulated stuff of our life should stay or go. (I do keep my hands off things that belong to my husband or our daughter, however.) I usually wonder at the outset if there is any need, since I went through everything just a year before, but I end up taking a car load of things to the thrift shop and throwing out as much again. Even though it’s a lot of work, it’s strangely cathartic to do all of this sorting. It made me think about my relationship with things. Here are some of my thoughts after The Great Purge 2017:
1. Use it or lose it: After I Roy G. Bived a bunch of books in my bedside table that had been lurking in a storage box in the basement, I realized that there were twelve of them. I resolved to read one a month and that anything that was still there at the next rentrée wasn’t important enough to me to stay. So far, I’ve read one and I’m partway through the second.
2. Rethink bulk purchases: I threw out a lot of pantry items that were past their “best before” dates. In almost every case, these were items that I had purchased at a bulk store in a multi pack. Hmm. Questionable savings. Also, do I really want to be a warehouse? I’m going to rethink whether a multipack or jumbo size makes sense for empty nesters.
3. Have a memory box: Going through funny little cards our daughter had made or reading a letter my husband had written about some of her childhood escapades had me laughing until my sides hurt. I called my daughter and read them to her to share the memories and she had a good laugh, too. I have a pretty box for my souvenirs and a more masculine one for my husband’s.
4. Get rid of incomplete sets: Why was I keeping top sheets to sets where the bottom sheet had worn out? My neighborhood has boxes for fabric recycling where I can take things that aren’t fit to donate.
5. Re-evaluate decorative items: Does the clock, or ornament, or candlestick on your shelf represent your current taste, someone else’s taste, or who you were a decade ago. Let it go!
