We officially canceled our Paris trip today. We’d canceled the flights earlier, because United provided a time-bounded window in which to do so with no fee, and figured we’d just wait and either rebook flights if things got better, or, if not, cancel the Airbnb when the extenuating circumstances policy got extended to include July reservations (the cancelation policy was such that we’d end up having to pay the entire month’s rent anyway, and would’ve gotten only the cleaning fee refunded…). But then I tried just reaching out to the host of the apartment we’d booked and asking if she’d consider canceling, given the situation. She was super nice about it, and the whole thing was resolved more or less painlessly and instantly.
I had a delightful first-time meeting with someone in the morning. I was wearing — surprise — my muumuu, and he commented that he liked my shirt and dashed into his closet to show me a shirt that looked similar that he’d purchased in France a while back. His style was sufficiently casual — his background was an unmade bed in a basement room, and he was wearing a t-shirt and sweatpants — that I felt comfortable saying, do you want to know a secret? I backed up to show him that I was actually wearing an enormous muumuu, rather than what he’d perceived to be a stylish French blouse. “I’m basically wearing a blanket,” I said. Then he said, do you want to know a secret? What looked like sweatpants was actually, literally, a bedsheet. His mother had sewn pants out of his favorite soft childhood sheets. Touché.