There is a God and he works at the Faubourg Saint Antoine Monoprix

This post is dedicated to a certain someone who came to visit not so very long ago, and with whom I shared many a profound conversation over cranberry juice. I am hoping this will inspire her to return for more cosmo-spiked discussions, once she gets her law degree out of the way, of course.

When I moved to Paris back in 2001, I knew and didn't terribly mind that certain cherished grocery store items would no longer be available to me, and definitely not at 11pm on a Sunday night. I even kind of relished the idea of having to discover the French equivalents of Crest, whole wheat sliced bread, and cream cheese. (Still haven't found it, by the way, so if you have, we need to talk.)

However, it wasn't until I found myself desperately seeking public restrooms that I was confronted with my first real moment of cultural rejection; suddenly I could not fathom settling down in a country that did not stock its Champions and Eds with aisles upon aisles of Ocean Spray.

After a lot of hand speak and embarrassing, lip-pursed circumlocution, I was able to find a pharmacy that sold comprimés de canneberge (canneberge?? il me faut du cranberry dammit!) and was subdued momentarily. However, it wasn't long before the comprimés proved themselves maliciously ineffectual, and I was off to beg for more drugs from the Madame le docteur.

You can imagine my shocked glee, then, when I discovered the familiar bottles smiling up at me from the bottom juice row at our local Monoprix a couple months ago. (No I don't work or blog for Monoprix or Ocean Spray, though if the benevolent souls at O.S. were to offer me a marketing position, you can bet your bottom dollar I'd say YES)

All is not peaches and cream, though. At last reunited with my bitter-sweet panacea, I am overcome with an anxious foreboding that the juice row director will deem cranberry juice sales to be too low to justify re-order. Steps are being taken to prevent this nightmare from becoming reality, however. Operation Paranoid Horde is in full effect.