Saturday night fire

The fire, snooker and Baccarat

as I see it from my spot on the sofa

This is it. This is life as I like it; the only thing missing is snow falling outside the window, drifting up against the wall, tomorrow in question. Tonight, snooker, a fire in the wood stove, Baccarat curled up on the cushion for the smallest cat, snoozing cozily in front of the warmth of the fire, -- which is really very silly since she is a Black Lab and the littler cat weighs not even 1/10 what she does; it's rather like the cat fitting in a tea cup -- my husband at the hospital, and my son in Paris.

Peace. The opportunity to indulge myself in whatever I like, no one to whom to answer.

Who says living in a couple is a must for happiness?

I called my husband at the hospital, where he is on duty, to tell him that there is snooker the way one likes it on Eurosport, O'Sullivan and Higgins in the second semi-final of the Welsh Open.

"Tu es seule," he said. "Sam est parti à Paris, j'imagine." It occurred to me that he might have been feeling badly for me.

"Oui. Il a une soirée," I replied, not feeling disappointed in the least to be alone, he at the hospital and my son off at a party. Au contraire. These are the Saturday evenings I love best, which makes me wonder just a little bit about the rest of my life.

At 7:30 pm, I finished up the batch of plaster I had prepared with a final sweep of the trowel and thought about making just a little but more to finish the last small area of the triangular segment of wall about the larger French doors, and then decided against it. Last night, I had felt the moment when the end was just perceptible. Why rush it?

I can't tell you what that moment feels like. This room has been particularly difficult. And to think that I looked at it and thought, With all that window, it'll be a cinch ("si facile", pour les français), but I was wrong. I am approaching 4 bags of plaster at 15kg each, and it is a small room, and I haven't finished yet. I learned my lesson on the orange room: aim for smooth and don't fill the depressions in the walls, and you'll when it's time to start painting with the roller. This leaves me with a cruel choice: fatigue my hand applying plaster to fill in those depressions as much as possible and make a single plane of the wall, or kill my hand pressing on the roller, turning it this way and that, to cover the depressed areas in paint. I tried the latter the last time, so I thought I'd give the former a try this time, but all I can think about is the piano and the room for it that I really need to get a move on.

Had I bought the first piano he showed me, it would be here by now; I would have cared much less about the room, but this piano is special. It needs a room digne de lui. Not just the walls need to be plastered and the wainscoting continued all the way around, and not just the wood floor finished where it ended at the storage system my husband never finished, but a whole new wood floor: old parquet.

I have to find that parquet, my husband has to install it, and Monsieur would like to deliver the piano, and before all of that, the larger guest room has to be finished (because I said so, and) because everything from the room that will receive the piano needs a place to go before I can insist on the wood floor being done right now, which involves the will of my husband, so that Monsieur can slide the piano into place and it will only have to be maneuvered ever so slightly to let us finish the wainscoting around it.

Already I am accepting the loss of the ideal. Before, the room had to be perfectly ready to receive my beautiful, beautiful piano. Now, at least the floor should be in place and the walls plastered.
....

A long thaw

F%#$@& bleak, and wet

It doesn't get worse. January in the garden during a thaw. I thought it was over when the temperature dropped to 6°C yesterday morning, but it didn't last. Today, the rain falls on a super-saturated natural world that can't absorb much more. It's ugly. Endlessly, dismally, depressingly ugly. So ugly that I wonder if the spring can really make it better again.

And, Jericho, you were right about that thaw business.



So let's see, where was I? Plastering the larger of the two guest rooms, what? A week ago? So, not much has changed from when we left off -- when was that? My last progress (snort) photos are from the 12th, the last progress (collapsing laughing) post the 14th, but the last time I actually touched a trowel? Hm. Well, there was the installation of the sisal (sliced, not diced) the 13th, the arrival and installation of the wood-burning stove the 18th, the very Monday of the week that snowballed me away from work on the house with the arrival of my friend the 19th, a dinner party the same night, the reinstallation of the satellite dish the wood stove installers took down with the rabbit ears, and entertaining for a week solid. I made a valorous effort, even if I wasn't very entertaining, having come down with an auto-immune infection, which is making its return right now.

Then, there was the let-down and recovery. The kicking and screaming. The sudden quiet when you realize that it's not getting you any closer to being done with it.

I have to finish. Monsieur would really like to get on with delivering the piano.

So, yesterday, possibly the day before (who knows?), I took up my trowel, resumed my mantle of self-created pressure and fought the despair of never, ever finishing like the devil himself.

Pouting never got anyone anywhere, or that's what my mother told me. I'm not so sure. Look at all those models.

Next week, the attorney writes a wake-up letter to the workers for the long-stopped renovations. Time for me to take over and prime the big guns, and then stick to them.

Stay tuned for lots more fun.

My plaster stuff is set, got to run.
....

The loneliness of language

Beer mats for wine

I cannot take credit for this photo, nor can I really feel free to give credit. It was taken by an artist friend (a real one), the creator of the beer mats, at a Paris brasserie where two old friends met two old friends to make a triangle of two architects and one artist in which the other two have been acquaintances as long. There were, in addition, one son, an art agent, and another person, who left nearly upon the arrival of my son and I, offering apologies for not liking me well enough to stay.

He joked. He had an EuroStar to catch across the rue de Dunkerque. They are very darkly and nearly meanly funny, those English. Spending enough time in England once upon a time to remark this helped me understand my grandfather, which 17 years in his company in the States left a puzzle. His English genes ran strong.

Missing were all three spouses, mine being the only one actually in the same country that evening and being missing because he does not speak English. I am always present because I speak both English and French, and this, I learned sometime into a bi-cultural marriage, makes for loneliness.

When I began this venture some years ago, this did not occur to me. I saw the project in the same sense he did: I was coming to live in France, and it would be easy for me to make the transition because I already knew many of his friends and a fair number from his large family, and I spoke French well enough to be allowed to say that I am fluent. We completely forgot about the other aspect of the situation, which is that he speaks English well enough to say that he does not, and he cannot even get to know my friends and family who can say they speak French well enough to say that they do not, which is nearly everyone.

The truth, of course, is somewhere in between. He speaks English well enough to communicate, but he does not consider this good enough or satisfying enough to bother if he thinks he can possibly get around the effort, which leads to a lot of avoidance. Avoiding nearly everyone I know, that is.

The consequence of the truth is that I feel lonely. And maybe a little resentful.

And, who'd have thought it?

Not only, however, are there friends of mine he will never learn to appreciate and enjoy as I have his, but there is an entire literature and culture that I make my pleasure-ground that he cannot access, while I can pick up a novel written in French and recognize fine writing, recognize the social and political cues and their underpinning in French culture, while he has only television programs, reports, movies and my accounts from which to judge US culture.

And not that he usually believes my accounts, which is a whole other story.

I can remember the beginning of marital tensions at a dinner party with friends and family. What we were all discussing over dinner, I can't even remember now; there are so many subjects possible as sources of friction. My (French) brother-in-law listened to my husband and I for a moment and then interjected, "C'est fou, mais toutes vos disputes prennent des proportions internationales tout de suite!" He wasn't wrong, our disagreements do have an international dimension of cultural conflict. Never did we have the luxury of simply disagreeing. We need the State Department staff in US-French relations constantly. Or, we needed to move him to the US for a decade right now, before his youngest children could be sure to get an experience in US education, too.

But, there are so many things at which I am merely hinting. It does get personal, and boring. To return to my point, what occurred to me and took me by surprise was how lonely this would be. Added to most of our lives spent apart and only shared in the stories we told one another long after the events had passed, but their consequences not necessarily dimmed, many aspects of our shared life could not be shared at all, and when they could, they pertained to his life, not mine. English would be required for that.

This is a stark realization into which to run. In many ways, my husband is like you. He knows of my life by my descriptions, not by personal experience of it with me, even when he is sometimes there. Mostly, he chooses not to be, and he is right. Not only would he be bored to tears, his bored-to-tears presence would diminish our experience; we'd have so much less fun, fun he'd like me to describe when I return home, but which I will not. Somewhat petulant, I continue to believe that if he cared, he would bother to learn and then to do. He would reach past the barrier that language imposes and erase it by using the English he does possess until it improved and allowed him to join us and participate, like I had to learn to do to be here and not be miserable.

It starts you along the path of considering all the things you cannot share, and have not shared, and as that list begins to grow far longer than the one of the things you do share, doubt sets in. What do you share? Doubt followed by a little panic. Is it enough that it goes in one direction? I thought so, until I understood that not everything can be translated and retain its value. You only need look at the poetry of Victor Hugo translated into English to start to grasp that. It makes something new, not Victor Hugo in English, but an approximate idea of Hugo for English speakers. My evening with an English-speaking artist and and English-speaking architect, two old friends, for French speakers who don't know much about art and architecture other than what personal experience as observers tells them.

It is my experience.

Which goes back then to the notion that we are alone. All of us.
....

Seasons and lack of good reasons

The bleak house, on another bleak day

This is what our house looks like from the garden right now if you are an iPhone.

Not so great, right? I am still despairing. Maybe it's the fatigue from a long week and being stuck in my sleeping hours, which make a nice, recuperative lie-in impossible. I can lie-in, but I cannot count on sleeping.

Look at it.

I need to authorize my brother-in-law to set the lawyer on our contractor. That much is evident. They left at the end of September, having touched everything on the list of things that had to be finished to satisfy the contract (as rewritten in July), but having left all of them partially finished and promising to be back "just as soon" as the brick was delivered. Well, the longest of the delivery delays for the two types of brick in question was five weeks. Without fumbling for a calendar, I can say that puts us about 2 1/2 months overdue for their return. Epic fail.

Again.

My very old friend, who happens to be an architect, too, took this series of photos that iPhones know how to make into panoramic views. He did not say the house looked wonderful, or even nice. Then again, he had never seen it before, and even if he had, he might agree with me that he preferred it "before".

"Maybe you can show me the beautiful garden," he suggested, sounding just a little too hopeful for some reward for his effort to come all the way here, from all the way over there, in England.

"No," I told him, waggling my head, "I'm afraid not. It's January. It's not beautiful in January."

From the look on his face as he listened to my admission of guilt and defeat, and his reminder about gardens having potential for beauty in the middle of the starkness of winter and the mud of the thaws, I knew I had disappointed again. But then, I already knew that I had fallen short in my garden planning for the winter months. I said something apologetic about how the original garden had really been for the warm seasons, and how I had never quite gotten around to doing anything about that. I also mumbled something I actually believe about rather Italianate terraced gardens not being readily adapted to winter planting.

"It is quite lovely, though," I assured him, "when it snows." Mercifully, he did not reply.

And when it is not scarred with the debris of the workers' abandoned efforts, the house sort of finished, missing a balcony, the stoops undone, the pile of sand for the chaux and the concrete collecting delicious cat poohs -- delectables for our Black Labrador Retrievers --, the planting bed along the front of the house torn up, the antenna recently removed from the chimney lying prone across the spotty grass, the surface plants rotting in the fish pond-in-a-fountain, a large square of concrete reinforcing grid leaning up against the plant urns, shielding the Bergenia cordifolia from -- nothing in particular.

But where, the question is, do I find the energy again to get all this back in movement?

From looking at the new green spikes from what appears to be a hyacinth bulb in a cast-off plastic flower pot push their way up to the light, a reminder that every living thing has its cycles, its seasons, including me?

I am sure a letter from a lawyer will help, but do I have the courage to deal with the workers again? Dumb and irrelevant question. I have no choice.

I have to.

But, in the face of marriage and home renovation, humanitarian work is looking better and better. I just ordered Greg Mortenson's follow-up to Three Cups of Tea, Stones into Schools, and I came across the fact that Mullah Abdul Salaam Zaeef, last seen on page 279 of Three Cups of Tea being taken into custody in Gitmo, has written his own book, My Life in the Taliban.

My copy from the press of my alma mater is pre-ordered.
....

Bleak house

The wood stove

Despair.

As in, "I'm never going to finish, and I have to paint and get the floor in the "petit salon" and plaster that room and paint it and get Audouin to do the wainscoting -- all before the piano is delivered, which I have to take care of soon or Monsieur will start to be unhappy that it is still in his studio and taking so long, and he will think that maybe I am not so very serious and perhaps not such a good customer -- and get a new rug for the living room and figure out how to arrange the furniture and a rug for the dining table and there's the kitchen and the bathroom and the toilet, and I have to get wood for the stove and pick up something for dinner and get to the airport by 8 pm and we're going to eat so late and I will be tired tomorrow and I don't know how I am ever going to be able to get this done and he's going to not want to spend the money, and the piano that he doesn't even want but sees as a big useless expense, which maybe it really is because who said you need a piano anyway? Hunh?"

This is a sin, if I remember my catechism. It's what can lead to suicide, and that's bad. It's what faith and prayer are meant to ward off.

Does talking to myself count?

As in, Stop. Don't. One thing a time. You'll get it done; first this, and then the next project. You'll be happy with the result. Your marriage, that's another story, but aren't you just a little too spent to try to figure that out right now, too? Let it go. Just keep on, and, tu sais bien, one must imagine Sisyphus happy.

Sisyphus happy. Sisyphus happy.

Sisyphe is not always so very happy. Sisyphe sometimes feels despair and fatigue that she wishes she would not. She imagines rising, high up on the top of a mountain above a vast valley, and from there everything becomes clear. She knows who she is, and what she is doing. Her life makes sense and is in harmony. Sometimes, she can feel this. She is there.

It does not last.

There are little victories, small accomplishments. Busy, busy days that yield a net progress. Yesterday, the wood-burning stove was installed. The heating oil arrived and so did 5 cubic meters of fire wood, in 1 meter lengths, requiring splitting and then chopping into fourths to fit into the chamber of the stove. The truck pulled up and dumped its load unceremoniously on the wide area of sidewalk in front of France Telecom next to our gate.

"That's 5 cubic meters?" I asked myself. It looked like a bit less, but Monsieur Ceylan wasn't staying around to verify it with me, not like the guy who delivered to our neighbors, came to see us and suggested we call him when we had the date for our installation, since he'd only need 2 or 3 days notice to deliver, and then never returned my calls. Consolation: our neighbor discovered that his wood was a little bit green.

"C'est que du chêne, du bon bois," he told me, "2 1/2 years," he added, standing a little taller. The installer looked at it with doubt in his eyes.

"Et, c'est un peu humide à l'extérieure, mais l'intérieure c'est sec, du bon bois," he repeated. "Vous devez le savoir. Ca c'est votre travail aussi." You should recognize good wood when you see it. That's part of your work, too, he told the installer, and harrumphed. Hein. I was feeling really doubtful now, but I had hands to shake, au revoirs to make and 5 cubic meters of wood to get off the sidewalk under the wandering eye of my alcoholic neighbor, who lives in the trailer down on the other side of the field, and waits for her young son to get off the bus at our gate. I picked up a log and tried to meet her eye as it traveled off to the side. Fix the other one, idiot.

I talk to myself a lot.

One log, a second, third, tenth, and each time I smiled courageously at her as I shouldered through our gate just beside her, and she looked back at the still large pile of wood. I was not going to say My son will be home soon to help me. Why should she need to know this? And, then, 2.5 cubic meters later, I heard the gate and saw his helmeted head atop his red Canada Goose parka covered body -- this weekend's eBay find -- coming up the steps.

"Sam, I need your help bringing the wood into the courtyard."

"Later."

"Actually, I need your help now."

"You want me to work, and --" he had other needs to which to attend.

"That's true, I do, but right now I need your help right now." I heard grumbling. I would have liked to have heard a bright and cheery voice say, "Sure, Mom. I'll be right there." Where are those kids, who say that?

The second 2.5 cubic meters went much faster with two, but there was that little chip of stucco we lost as the pile neared the top of the base of the house. I longed to hear, "Sorry, Mom," rather than, "You can get that fixed." It's true. When and if they ever return, they can fix it, but it is better to be more careful and imagine what can happen when a large log hits a corner of more fragile chaux.

"Ce n'est pas très costaud," said my husband later.

"Non," I sighed.

"Et je suis allé voir le bois. Ca n'a pas l'aire de 5 stères. A la louche, je dirais un peu moins, 4.8 maximum."

"Je sais. J'ai pensé la même chose," I sighed again, tired. I was still trying to get the fire going again, without the kindling we needed. I had run to the boulangerie, intending to head on to the supermarket for the groceries and cut firewood of an appropriate size until we get ours in order, only to discover that I had left my bank card and papers, everything but my checkbook at home. I'd have to find sympathetic people and plead my case, Please, please may I write a check, even though I don't have my identity card? Could I truly be in France? Everyone was delighted to oblige me, but, now, I was late. I tore off my plaster and wood chip-covered sweater and jeans, threw on a dress, ran a brush through my hair to remove the mountain-woman residue, grabbed my keys and headed to the airport to pick up an old friend, arriving from the UK.

When we returned, Audouin had moved the furniture, pushed here and there and piled up in the corners for the installation of the wood stove, which, surprise, surprise, the two guys said was the hardest they had ever done (everything here is always the hardest anyone has ever had to face), into a semblance of welcoming order that looked intentional.

I looked around, "Où est la petite table basse?"

He looked triumphant. He had seized his opportunity, "Je l'ai mise là, dans le coin entre les deux canapés," exactly where he wanted it, "et les livres, je les ai mis dans l'entrée, dans la place des boites," which, I noticed, had come to live on the coffee table that was now supporting the reading lamp and phone, as well.

"Bon, on prendra une table basse pour pouvoir posser nos verres et les apéros."

"Mais pas de livres. Je ne veux pas de livres sur la table basse." I turned and looked at my friend, translating, "He doesn't want coffee table books on the coffee table."

Why, oh why, is marriage so hard?

At least the home fire will burn at last in the hearth if the others have, as so often happens, cooled. Maybe the tiny warmth from this littlest of stoves will shake the chill, enough.

No, it takes more than that. Time to go to the grocery store. I am here, and not in Paris with my friend, because the installers cut the satellite dish cables when I asked them to take down the old rake antenna from the chimney, and I had to wait for the satellite guy. After all the care they took in cutting the electrical wire to the motor someone had installed up there in an effort to get the chimney to draw (epic fail), you'd think they'd have said, "Madame, il y a une parabole là-dessus. Veuillez qu'on la coupe vraiment?" But no, they cut, and now we finally have a larger, round dish to replace the little rectangular one we got on a special offer. The one that cut out every time it started to rain, like in the middle of the Wimbledon finals, or anything we particularly wanted to see.

Tonight, we have a dinner party with old friends and our guest star, the wood stove, burning brightly in the hearth and, perhaps, kindling the home fires.

....

Fran Lebowitz on Jane Austen

Fran Lebowitz: Reflections on Austen from The Morgan Library & Museum on Vimeo.

....

The work on the "petite maison"

Update on the sisal installation. I upset the installer, who smelled fairly successfully watered with alcohol from lunch. Did he really think that I wasn't going to mention his cutting clean through the sisal to the store through which he was contracted?

Seriously?

How dumb do people think we are?

The store asked me to send pictures to include in our file, along with any comments I felt too uncomfortable to make on the form I filled out in the installer's presence, and which he had to sign, too. I did. I wish I hadn't had to. I have asked for a partial refund or, preferably, the replacement of the bathroom installation.

We shall see.

Now, I really wish I had something of use to offer the Haitians and that my son were not passing the bac this year and in need of the rails I set down for him to follow to have a hope of success. I am reading of the need that I can well imagine for care for pregnant women in Port au Prince. I wish he could take time from the hospital and go. He is French-speaking and the most human of doctors, with a gift for strength and calm in the face of calamity.
....

Sliced sisal

Morning light through the mist over the field

"I gave someone the link to your blog," said my sister, "but, you haven't been posting much lately." Caught.

I am, in fact, way behind. This is not my fault. I have been busy. I have been exerting self-discipline with a no-Internet, no-blog rule in effect until I finish my work. The problem is there is no end in sight to my work, so I find that I must make a very small exception and catch up because the memory card on my camera has photos going back to Christmas morning that I haven't downloaded and placed neatly into labeled, dated virtual files in my file tree, the tea partiers have been shuffling off to Washington for a week now, and I never even finished the Christmas breakdown. For that, we can say "all's well that end well" and thank heavens we have more than one car and a Thule roof carrier.

It's not that I have more to do now than I did before Christmas. I don't. I have exactly the same amount to do. It's just that on Monday, January 4 (I remember exactly), my day on the couch in front of Eurosport that could easily have stretched into two or more (with lots of self-loathing for loafing) came to an end with a phone call. It was the carpet layer calling to schedule the wall-to-wall sisal installation for the prettily named petite maison (prettier than the petite maison itself by far). At last. I had rather been hoping not to hear from him for another month, at least. It had already been months.

Those of you who have followed these journals since at least last spring might recall that I was seized one day with the very sudden and particularly urgent need to paint the guest rooms, not unlike Mole, when he felt the need to go home, walking along with Ratty (see Wind in the Willows, Chapter 5, "Dolce Domum" excerpts here). Feeling that my domum was not so very dolce, and expecting a house guest shortly, I set to work. As is always the case, once the walls began to look so much nicer, it was apparent that the floor simply had to be fixed up, too. Sisal. It had to be fresh and clean, bright and cheery, welcoming and add to the usable surface of the house by making you actually want to go and use those rooms, rather than never, ever open their doors for fear of bothering the spiders, their usual occupants with rent control rights.

For one reason and another, the sisal installation could not be done in time, and the story petered out. Worse, my husband set up shop (wood shop) in the larger of the two rooms, not as yet painted, to make the smaller balcony the workers renovating the house decided was too expensive -- along with the rest of the house -- for them to do in the contract we had all signed one fine day, more than a year and a half ago.

And I miss the house the way it was, dilapidated and worn.

His work progressed as rapidly as working 13 hours a day at the hospital and having his kids every other weekend can allow, and then adjusting for weather, shorter and shorter days... and I had to relaunch the sisal installation or lose our deposit. Having done that, it was only a matter of time before the installer actually called, which he did right before Christmas. 15 times one day. Not leaving a message, I could avoid acknowledging the unidentified calls filling my "missed calls" folder on Orange.com. He didn't have to know that I had programmed my phone with his number and "poseur moquette" came up on its screen when he called. On Monday the 4th, I simply had to pick up. We exchanged seasonal greetings, which I brought quickly to the business at hand.

"Mais, ça fait des mois et des mois depuis que je suis venu chez vous prendre les mesures!" He wasn't going to get down to business that fast. First, we had to discuss why it had taken months. For someone lounging on the new couch we had just picked up in Paris, one of two wood and leather supposedly art deco style sofas from RocheBobois, we are told, although there is not a ticket identifying them as such on them, in front of the TV, I was feeling in the mood for efficiency.

"Oui, c'était compliqué," I said, hoping the complexity of the situation to which I referred would set him off. It didn't. So, the whole mess came out: the first quote, followed by a second, more expensive, for reasons that escaped me. A lot of "bon, vous savez" to avoid speaking of having had my foot operated on twice to remove all traces of melanoma, the second one not going anywhere near as swimmingly as the first a month earlier, and then my husband's having turned the space into a wood shop, the project dragging on and on. No, it wasn't all the fault of the store, and, no, it wasn't at all his fault. Mea culpa. Now can we set a date?

"Vous me dites quand, Madame. Je vous propose la semaine prochaine. Vous me dites quand ça vousu arrangera le mieux." Next month? No, next week, he had said. Then it didn't really matter; any day would be too soon.

"Quand vous voudriez, Monsieur."

"Alors, mercredi? Ca vous ira, mercredi?"

"C'est impeccable." Perfect. I practically bolted off the couch and raced to the rooms to receive the sisal floor covering. All of that would have to come into the house, and I would have to plaster and paint the room I had never done. Time to get cracking.

Of course, like any reasonable person, I am capable of down-sizing my expectations and finally accepting that I am never going to finish on time. Wednesday the 13th was coming too fast, with too many other things to do between time, like pick up a sofa bed we'd also picked up on eBay, along with the chair, the two leather couches, and (so far) 7 antique Thonet bistro chairs for the dining table, with 3 more arriving soon. Every time another blob of damp plaster hit the floor below my ladder, joining those I had already smushed under foot all over the tile floor, I saw visions of plaster-encrusted sisal.

Mental note: get plastic drop clothes and tape them firmly in place for finish plastering and painting.

Tuesday the 12th, my cell phone rang.

"Oui, allo?"

"Bonjour, Madame, c'est l'installateur de moquette. J'ai un peu de temps là, et je voulais savoir si je pourrais passer commencer cet après-midi." It's the carpet layer, I can come to lay your carpet now. I looked around at the mess. I considered. It wasn't like it was going to be that much farther advanced the next morning.

"Bien sur." Certainly. Come right on over. "Je dois vider la pièce, mais cet après-midi ou demain matin, ça ne change rien. Allez y."

However, rather than beginning with the guest room, the orange one, I had emptied out onto the lawn, damp between snowfalls, he started in the bathroom. As I worked, I could hear him laboring in the adjacent bath, sounding for the world like something else with all the grunting and moaning. He must have a breathing problem, I thought. That's it, a breathing problem, from all the carpet fibers and -- the glue. That's it. Don't think about it, don't think about it -- plaster.

Then, he swore quite pointedly.

Mental note: see what could have gone particularly wrong later.

At 3:30 pm, they headed home, leaving the orange room undone, and all its contents covering the lawn.

Mental note: put all that away again, and do not complain when you have to remove it all again tomorrow. It's not worth it.

I went back to plastering, and then I got my camera to take pictures of the lovely new sisal in the bath, when it caught my eye. I didn't need that mental note. There it was, a "v"-shaped knife slash in the sisal, just near the toilet and the shower stall. I bent down to look more closely at what I saw quite well already from the grandeur of my 5'-4": it was cut clean through to the backing. I touched it, and fibers came up effortlessly.

Mental note: glue will not be an acceptable solution. Prepare to be determined and hard-nosed.

I hate that. I really, really hate that. But, not one single thing that has been done by others on this house so far has been done without a blunder, if it has been done at all. Not one single subcontractor has done quality work, with the exception (I hope) of our faithful plumber.

I told my husband when he came home to help me pick up the first car from the garage and take the second to its appointment (they just called to say we need new disks and pads, on top of everything else, which includes my husband's most recent run-in with a decorative parking post near the train station, but we won't talk about that).

"Il va proposer de la coller, mais ça n'ira pas. Il faudra le refaire car ça ne tiendra pas."

"Crois-moi, c'est comme ça que ça va finir." He meant with glue, not getting it redone.

"On verra. J'appellerai le magasin." Already, they weren't there yesterday as promised. It snowed. He swore the roads were closed, by order of the mairie where he lives. He'd give me his address; I could come and see. No, thank you. I pointed out that the workers were working away on the apartments in the old school across the street, and what a shame it was that he was losing a day's wages.

I called the store this morning at the opening, just as their van pulled up outside the house at 9 am sharp. I didn't get the woman in installation, but the person who answered told me to be sure to fill out the part for my comments and any problems when I sign his work form, and I hung up and went out to say good morning.

"Madame, je l'ai réparé. Ce n'est rien." Of course it's nothing. On the phone the day before, he had told me, "Vous ne vous inquiétez pas," he'd take care of everything. Good as new. Vous ne vous inquiétez pas, Madame. If that's not the cue to start worrying right away, I don't know what is. I followed him into the bathroom to look. It was worse.

"Ne le touchez pas, Madame. Je viens de le coller. C'est parfait." Perfect is usually not a subjective term. It looked like he had piled the fibers on any which way, pressing them into the glue he had apparently used underneath. I touched it, gingerly.

"Ne le touchez pas, Madame. Ne le touchez pas." It's my sisal, and I will touch it. "Ca va aller très bien. Ce n'est pas possible de le refaire car la colle est trop forte; c'est de la bonne colle, Madame, la bonne colle." To distract me from the sliced sisal, he had changed to vaunting the quality of the glue. I tried to communicate with my expression all the doubt I felt.

"Je vais quand-même le marquer sur le papier à la fin, dans le cas ou," and here I forced myself to look up from the floor his assistant saw diligently preparing for the sisal in the room next door, where I had gone to escape the sad sight, "ça ne tient pas," and it isn't, I am quite sure, going to hold as he kept repeating it would. He was scared now. I felt badly. Really.

"Mais non! Non! Je vous donnerai mon numéro. Vous m'appellerez si ça ne va pas. Voyez, je n'ai pas l'intérêt de faire ça," he stuttered, really nervous now, adding, "Je vous l'ai déjà donné, voyez que j'ai bien voulu." All of which really only amounted to telling me to call him if it started to come apart and not report it to the store. No can do.

"Non, je dois l'indiquer au magasin sur le paper car c'est avec eux que j'ai fait le contrat."

"Ah, oui, bon, d'accord. Notez-le sur le papier --"

It was time to put him out of his misery and leave him to finish. I'll deal with the store and let them handle the situation. It is, after all, their responsibility.

Mental note: mention the missing separator bars at the two doors, where the sisal changes direction from the bedrooms to the bathroom.

Vous ne vous inquiétez pas, Madame. On s'en occupera...
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The "we hate government crew", shuffling off to Washington

America's dancing patriots, the Tea Partiers
http://blogs.courant.com/capitol_watch/2009/09/tea-party-patriots-cheer-congr.html

The public is not only shifting from left to right. Every single idea associated with the educated class has grown more unpopular over the past year.
-- David Brooks, "The Tea Party Teens"


I'm listening to David Brooks. I was during the 2012 campaign, and these days, I'm listening maybe more than ever. Brooks and Rachel Maddow, and Keith Olbermann, Chris Matthews and Jon Stewart, too. But today, David Brooks has my attention. Here's what he had to say in his column yesterday in the New York Times.

Personally, I think we'd be wise to listen and not go on about how American is a democracy based on humanist principals and Enlightenment philosophy. America has another, parallel and conflicting history that we ignore at our own peril. It might be about to own us, just when we thought our own party was starting when Barack Hussein Obama was elected by a heavy margin of victory and inaugurated a year ago.


The Tea Party Teens

By DAVID BROOKS

Published: January 4, 2010

The United States opens this decade in a sour mood. First, Americans are anxious about the future. Sixty-one percent of Americans believe the country is in decline, according to the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal survey. Only 27 percent feel confident that their children’s generation will be better off than they are.

Second, Americans have lost faith in their institutions. During the great moments of social reform, at least 60 percent of Americans trusted government to do the right thing most of the time. Now, only a quarter have that kind of trust.

The country is evenly divided about President Obama, but state governments are in disrepute and confidence in Congress is at withering lows. As Frank Newport of the Gallup organization noted in his year-end wrap-up, “Americans have less faith in their elected representatives than ever before.”

Third, the new administration has not galvanized a popular majority. In almost every sphere of public opinion, Americans are moving away from the administration, not toward it. The Ipsos/McClatchy organizations have been asking voters which party can do the best job of handling a range of 13 different issues. During the first year of the Obama administration, the Republicans gained ground on all 13.

The public is not only shifting from left to right. Every single idea associated with the educated class has grown more unpopular over the past year.

The educated class believes in global warming, so public skepticism about global warming is on the rise. The educated class supports abortion rights, so public opinion is shifting against them. The educated class supports gun control, so opposition to gun control is mounting.

The story is the same in foreign affairs. The educated class is internationalist, so isolationist sentiment is now at an all-time high, according to a Pew Research Center survey. The educated class believes in multilateral action, so the number of Americans who believe we should “go our own way” has risen sharply.

A year ago, the Obama supporters were the passionate ones. Now the tea party brigades have all the intensity.

The tea party movement is a large, fractious confederation of Americans who are defined by what they are against. They are against the concentrated power of the educated class. They believe big government, big business, big media and the affluent professionals are merging to form self-serving oligarchy — with bloated government, unsustainable deficits, high taxes and intrusive regulation.

The tea party movement is mostly famous for its flamboyant fringe. But it is now more popular than either major party. According to the NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, 41 percent of Americans have a positive view of the tea party movement. Only 35 percent of Americans have a positive view of the Democrats and only 28 percent have a positive view of the Republican Party.

The movement is especially popular among independents. The Rasmussen organization asked independent voters whom they would support in a generic election between a Democrat, a Republican and a tea party candidate. The tea party candidate won, with 33 percent of independents. Undecided came in second with 30 percent. The Democrats came in third with 25 percent and the Republicans fourth with 12 percent.

Over the course of this year, the tea party movement will probably be transformed. Right now, it is an amateurish movement with mediocre leadership. But several bright and polished politicians, like Marco Rubio of Florida and Gary Johnson of New Mexico, are unofficially competing to become its de facto leader. If they succeed, their movement is likely to outgrow its crude beginnings and become a major force in American politics. After all, it represents arguments that are deeply rooted in American history.

The Obama administration is premised on the conviction that pragmatic federal leaders with professional expertise should have the power to implement programs to solve the country’s problems. Many Americans do not have faith in that sort of centralized expertise or in the political class generally.

Moreover, the tea party movement has passion. Think back on the recent decades of American history — the way the hippies defined the 1960s; the feminists, the 1970s; the Christian conservatives, the 1980s. American history is often driven by passionate outsiders who force themselves into the center of American life.

In the near term, the tea party tendency will dominate the Republican Party. It could be the ruin of the party, pulling it in an angry direction that suburban voters will not tolerate. But don’t underestimate the deep reservoirs of public disgust. If there is a double-dip recession, a long period of stagnation, a fiscal crisis, a terrorist attack or some other major scandal or event, the country could demand total change, creating a vacuum that only the tea party movement and its inheritors would be in a position to fill.

Personally, I’m not a fan of this movement. But I can certainly see its potential to shape the coming decade.

Let's watch Countdown's Chris Matthews with Democratic strategist Chris Kofinas, too, as they talk about the Tea Partier's holiday season "Die-in" on Capitol Hill, making merry with Republican lawmakers.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

And, at a resplendent and elegant Paris New Year's Eve dinner, over oysters from Brittany, langoustines and foie gras, as the champagne, wine and conversation flowed, I debated politics politely (Rhetorical question of the day: Is it possible to ever debate politics politely? In other words, can politics ever be considered polite conversation?) with a Dutch gentleman, married to an American from a well-healed, Pelham, NY Republican family, who graduated Harvard, and who remained silent throughout the exquisite, companionable dinner. At one point in our typical conversation for an American meeting an European at a dinner party, he started in with the age-old "I'm ashamed to be an European" thing (yes, he did say it); he was sincere. He was building up a head of steam, but I cut him off.

"There is no reason for this now. We are past the days of the Marshall Plan, Europe is off its knees and leading, and it well ought to be with 750 million citizens. Look at Denmark, leading the world in environmental regulations and innovations that have given it a world-class financial edge. And do not talk to me about the emergence of China; they do not feel the slightest need to concern themselves with their people. We do, and we must take them, too, into account as we shape our societies, our businesses and our economies. For this, Europe represents a set of social and economic values and government and business practices that produce real gains and successes, and Europe can show the world the way forward." In short, that was then, this is now. He listened, and then he leaned close to me and said,

"You know, I agree with you. A couple of years ago," and here, he glanced nearly imperceptibly towards his wife, seated across the table from him, who I was not sure was appreciating me as much as our hostess had hoped she would, before continuing, "I would have disagreed with you, but now I don't."

Happy New Year.

No, Americans won't like it, but they have every interest in taking a long look around them. Only they won't, as surely as I am sitting here, my feet turning to blocks of ice in my Wellies, writing this.

You've all got your work cut out for you, but I'm sure that Obama and all his voters are up to it. You'd best be, or soon the Tea Partiers will be dancing up the Capitol steps to their offices.

I hear Chris Dodd's is up for grabs.
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