If you think I'm sad, guess again. Everything couldn't be more perfect. I'm working reasonable hours for an amazing Parisian pastry shop. I'm learning many new techniques and how to make the most amazing desserts. Oh yeah, and I'm also in-like. But I'm still blue and it's thanks to my new internship.

Last week, I worked with the macaron team making thousands upon thousands of macarons for both stores. On Tuesday, a special order from a restaurant came in. The owner was celebrating a special occasion, so he ordered several hundred macarons. And he wanted them to be blue.

Normally when you color a macaron, you add food coloring to the batter before it's baked. For whatever reason, and I doubt I'll ever learn why, my boss decided to spray paint them. Out of the oven, the macarons were a perfectly clean white. But after a few quick passes with a spray gun and some blue food coloring, the macarons were disarmingly blue. In fact they were so blue, they looked unappetizing. But it wasn't our request, so we proceeded to unmold them, fill them, and package them despite our misgivings. By the end of the night, we had safely tucked every last macaron in a special box, ready to be picked up the next morning.

But what a mess. The kitchen really isn't equipped to handle someone wielding a spray gun so blue paint was everywhere. It seeped into minuscule cracks on the counter top, sought out the furthest regions of the kitchen, and lightly covered the walls. Even with eight people, we had a hard time cleaning up. No matter how many times we wiped a surface, it remained blue. In fact, adding water seemed to make the problem worse. By the end of the night, we were all exhausted from bending over, reaching up and maneuvering around corners. I was relieved to be finished.

Standing in the locker room with another Cordon Bleu intern, I started to laugh. When I removed my uniform, it was completey covered in a fine blue mist. Even my socks sucked up some of the color. There are worse things to be covered in (like pigeon blood for example), so I didn't mind too much. Until I looked in the mirror that is.

Staring back at myself, I stopped laughing. I could see the outline of my chef's jacket on my throat where it protected my skin. The back of my neck was covered. When I smiled my teeth and tongue were blue from sampling a macaron. It looked like I picked up a Smurf and rubbed it all over my face. Suddenly I sneezed. Much to my horror, it looked like I took that same Smurf, chopped it into a fine powder and sniffed it up my nose. My Kleenex was bright blue as was the space on my upper lip just below my nose. I blew and blew until I couldn't blow anymore. And yet the inside of my nose was still blue.

Of course the color used had to be slightly permanent and not easy to remove. Although I scrubbed desperately with a paper towel, I couldn't get it all off. Slight embarrassed, I rode the Metro home hoping to hide my new color. But how do you not stare at someone who has blue coming out their nose?

Eventually the blue disappeared down the drain of the shower, but the next morning when I blew my nose, guess what I found? You guessed it - blue boogers! Lucky me. And my nose was not the only place the blue lingered. For the next three days whenever we cleaned, we would find traces everywhere.

I bet the pastry shop will think twice before taking a special order like that again. Besides, who wants to eat a blue macaron anyway??