A(nother) lost day, pour le piano

The materials move indoors

That's how far we got last night. I sponged the puddles of dirty water off the plastic covering taped to the rolls of insulation and the 120 cm x 300 cm panels of sheetrock, wringing blackened water into the puddles all around the pallet before I peeled the plastic back. My husband was being uncharateristically (Blogger doesn't like that word, but I checked; it's spelled correctly) patient. I hoped it would hold out. He only expressed mild surprise when I said that the largest thing on the bottom was the pile of sheetrock panels.

"Ca, en bas?" he peered more closely at whatever was mummified in plastic and criss-crossed in orange tape. I nodded.

"Si grand que ça?" I nodded.

"Un mètre vingt par trois mètres."

"Mais ça vient beaucoup plus petit --"

"Un mètre vingt par deux mètres cinquante," I offered. "Je sais."

"Plus petit encore," dit-il. "J'en ai mis quand je l'ai fait la dernière fois."

Here, we were getting into dangerous territory. He was referring to the sheetrock he had glued in place when he had redone the room some years before that I had torn off and piled between the house and the sorry excuse for a garage. I nodded. Remaining nonverbal and maintaining lack of eye contact can do wonders to avoid conflict. He looked back to the pile.

"Si tu vas mettre des boiseries, tu n'as même pas à te concerner des joints."

He had guessed what purpose the 3 meter length would serve: fewer joints. Not very important, however, when you plan on installing 128 cm tall wainscoting all around the room. I had already thought of that (too late), too.

My son, appearing barefoot in canvas shoes and baggy shorts on a crisp spring evening, was being characteristically uncommunicative. He glared at the pile that had to get into the house before the next deluge.

I hate 18.

They slid the first slightly damp panel off the pile with my help, turned it on its side and carried it inside. On the way in with the third, my husband called back just as I felt the first drops of rain where I was standing next to more than 3 square meters of completely exposed sheetrock surface.

"Le ciel est noir par ici. Il va tomber des cordes. Remets la bache en plastique."

Rain. More rain. I scrambled to cover the sheetrock, placing bricks around the edge and firewood from the pile next to it on top to hold the plastic sheeting in place in case the wind came back up, too. I finished just as the sky let loose and the rain fell hard. I stood there in disbelief. All that for 3 panels of sheetrock? Was the rest of it really going to have to spend another night out in the damp? Then, it stopped.

It stopped just as my husband reappeared around the corner, followed by my son. April showers (in March) bring May flowers.

"C'est bon," he said, still uncharacteristically ungrumpy with me. "Il y a du ciel bleu par là." He indicated the direction from which all weather here comes. The west.

We got it all inside, tucked between the stair and the back of the sofa. I covered the damp ends with a towel and stuck the red cat cushion on the end so there would be a hope that people (my husband, who after 55 springs is still not fully aware of the feet on the ends of his legs) would see the corner and not trip over it, further destroying the panels that were already a little damaged from the damp.

Now, we really do have to hurry and get it all installed, including the floor, which has been sitting in the petit salon acclimating itself since last week, because I don't know how long I can stand skirting around the pile, and time is ticking on the piano delivery. I don't know how much more guilt I can stand to feel, but today, I got nothing done except another trip to the vet.

Rapide cried all morning and they told me to bring her back in. The vet would see her between two appointments. There's no question that something is obviously wrong, but what that something is is not at all obvious. The tests come back fine, and she is anything but. She can barely stand and walk. I carried her from the waiting to the examination room, which was a lot easier this week than even last week, since she weighs another 4 lbs. less, despite eating normally.

"Qu'est-ce que tu nous fais?" the vet asked her.

"Elle nous fait une vraie saloperie," said my husband when I called on my way home.

She goes back Friday for for the day.

Picking my stepdaughter up from her riding class, she asked how my day went. I explained about Rapide and mentioned that it had kept me (excellent excuse that it is) from getting anything done on the petit salon, but we'd have to really work hard this weekend to make up for that.

"Pour le piano?" she asked.

"Oui, pour le piano." I can admit that to her. She knows. Although I do prefer her father not quite think of it just that way, since he isn't such a fan of the piano as are she and I.

Me? Thanks for asking. I'm getting a cold, but I'm sure I'll be just fine. I'll just take the rest of the bottle of Lillet up to bed with me.

It isn't just alcohol; it has oranges in it.
....

Sitting in the rain, just sitting in the rain

The puddle menaces the sheetrock

That hail I mentioned yesterday as a possible explanation for the state of the daffodils? It fell today, making a puddle that grew and grew towards the pile of supplies delivered by Point P yesterday that we couldn't bring inside since it rained all evening yesterday, too.

This was the worst case scenario.

I pulled on my new North Face super lightweight, waterproof ski jacket, grabbed the plastic drop cloth I used to protect the sisal when I was painting the summer room and crossed the terrace to lay it over the whole pile. The ends of the rolls of insulation weren't covered enough against the rain, just like one end of the pile of panels of sheetrock, and, as far as I can tell, the bottom of that pile isn't covered either, just sitting a few centimeters at best above the rain slick concrete and a few millimeters at worst at the end closest to the puddle. I reached down for the twentieth time to touch the insulation and the ends of the sheetrock panels, secured the drop cloth with firewood and grabbed the old broom the workers abandoned on the wood pile to push as much of the swelling puddle away as possible before it overtook the end of the piled up panels, drooping under their own considerable weight.

The sun has just come out, the sky has cleared, and I must mark the lengths on the metal framing members for my husband to cut this evening. He promised to come home as early as possible to do that, and I am not -- surprise, surprise -- ready.

I spent all day avoiding cleaning up the piles of diarrhea left by one of the dogs during the night on the living room wool rug that I discovered when I nearly stepped in the largest, on my way to sit down and start my work this morning with my coffee in hand. Rapide, I suspect. A new symptom to report to the vet if any of the others return.

I considered running to IKEA for a new rug, if they had another one just like this one, hoping my husband wouldn't notice -- no explanation required or defense to mount --, but then I realized it would only happen on the new one. And I want a lovely large woolen kilim.

Right. That's the day I build the dog house.

What an inglorious feeling, I'm procrastinating again.
....

Forces of nature: natural, human and mechanical

Eye contact

As if it weren't bad enough already to have forgotten how to houseclean, I am completely distracted by the suddenness of this spring. Today, I could virtually watch the peonies push further up and unfurl their tightly packed leaves (they look kind of like cramped zombie hands reaching up through the dirt, until they open, which is something of a relief), and I did watch the algae come up from the bottom of the fish basin, thanks to the algae-eating bacteria I have been dumping into it since last week, making the frogs miserable with my frequent appearances (they like it when I stay perfectly still, better yet, when I stay in the house).

Leaf buds are clamoring to populate the grape vines that were bare until today, it seemed, the Clematis 'Daniel Deronda' is about to bloom, the first bud still bearing its soft, fuzzy veil of white, and the hyacinths -- ah! the hyacinths! -- have naturalized in the border, and I have more than in any year previous.

The daffodils, on the other hand, look like they have found a predator, or there was hail while we were in Morzine-Avoriaz. Their petals are in tatters, heads hung low in beaten beauty.

I was also completely distracted by the need to get rid of old files and defrag my hard drive (my computer agreed that it really needed to be done), then figure out why Picasa3 was crashing every time I tried to launch it, and, come to think of it, why it had been crashing Firefox the last few days. If you're interested, I know why after spending far too much time looking it up on Google. I can't find the other helpful reply I found, but basically you have to uninstall Quicktime and reinstall the latest version, then completely uninstall Picasa (no cheating, you've got to hit "yes" and uninstall the database, too, but don't worry, I didn't lose my albums since everything was already set up in my "My Pictures" directory file tree), and then reinstall it. Picasa will then read all your pictures back in.

It works, but your afternoon is shot unless you are faster than I am at finding the answers to your problems.

I am sure you are.

Now, why can't I just defrag myself to go faster, because I can tell you that today fully made up in uselessness for all my purposefulness of Wednesday.

....

The oak floor

The last day before our train to Morzine was exceptionally harried. I was very proud of myself. My husband was sure we would miss the train. My pride I kept to myself. There's just no sense in expecting it to be shared when he is about to travel. Dr. Himself and Mr. Hyde. There is simply no way, as far as he is concerned, that we can ever leave early enough. His brain races to make lists of all the things that will go wrong, and if the car is not already in motion before the appointed hour, we are late.

Irrevocably late.

We will miss the train, plane, keep everyone waiting for lunch, to open their Christmas presents. Whatever.

It has escaped his attention that I have taken to being the one waiting for him over the years we have vécus maritalement. How do I know that it has escaped his attention? Because he is still telling everyone that, thanks to me, we were nearly late because we left later than he wanted.

Stop. Observe. Who has her coat on and who is thinking of changing his pants, and then maybe his shoes, and then heading for his coat?

"Ah, bon. T'es prête alors?" he asks.

"Oui. Il est temps de partir," I reply, standing there in my coat, pulling my gloves on imperiously. Imperiousness is not easy for me. I am more prone to pouting and defensively motivated attacks that have a certain hostile edge to them. "Tu pourrais peut-être penser à te préparer."

"Oui, oui," he says, with surprise, "je t'attendais." Yes, yes. I was just waiting for you. This is what we call mauvaise foi. He was watching television.

Nonetheless, Wednesday, I had reason to be just a little proud of myself, for I had finished the calculations for the gypsum board, metal framing and insulation order at Point P, gotten there to place the order set up the delivery (for today), driven to the auto école to get the papers necessary for my son's auto insurance, dropped them at the bank, driven to the wood shop, arriving before they closed for noon for lunch, to order the furring strips for the oak floor and to buy the solid oak flooring so that it could begin acclimating to the room in which it will be installed during our absence, gaining, I hoped, a few precious days after our return to get it installed, unloaded it into the house, snagging my nice sweater on a large splinter in one bunch, finished up the plans to drop off at the masons' homes so they could do the estimates for the work at the entries while we were gone, and raced out the door to the car just as my husband opened the gate in the bottom garden, heading off to leave them in their mailboxes. Mission accomplished.

When I got home, Rapide was still not moving, and it was an hour until our departure time. She had started the night before with her take a step, sit down and look at me despondently, get up and take another step, and sit down and look at me, and so on all the way from the front door to the strip of grass where they take care of their digestive and urinary business alongside the France Telecom utility building next door. My husband was finishing up his bag.

"Je pense qu'on va être obligé d'amener Rapide au vetérinaire avant de partir," I announced bravely, leaving the tiniest hint of doubt and regret in my voice. Enough so he would know with absolute certainty that I had not done this on purpose.

I hadn't.

"C'est pas vrai."

He looked at Rapide, lying on the living room carpet, where she had spent her entire morning, despite the door being open to a beautiful spring day. I nodded, careful to show my concern, and reached for the telephone. It took several phone calls to their two offices and some desperation and pleading to establish that they would finally let us drop her off and have my son pick her up after he finished school. There was no way I could sit at their office and wait (and wait, and wait) for the vet to see her; I had to make it to a train. Or else.

Her temperature was 2° C below normal, qualifying her condition as hypothermic. This meant she had not been bitten by a tic and did not have whatever that terrible tic-carried disease was that Baccarat got when she was little.

Phew.

It could mean that she was slowly (or rapidly) bleeding to death internally.

Not phew.

"On peut la laisser," I announced, and ran up to finish my bag, under his impatient regard.

"Mais, tu n'es pas obligé de m'attendre comme ça. Tu me rends nerveuse me regardant comme ça." We say "comme ça" a lot.

"Je veux descendre ton sac dès qu'il soit pret," he answered. I wasn't going to have any peace; he wasn't going anywhere until I closed my bag, which he was doing even as I watching reaching for the last things. The ski socks didn't make it in on time.

It was 3:03 pm when we pulled the car door shut and put the car in gear.

It was 3:23 pm when I finally got Rapide into the doors of the vet's office, not far from the entrance ramp to the highway to Paris. Sit, step, sit, step -- you get the idea.

The receptionist asked me for the symptoms, taking careful notes. I was about to go crazy when she asked the same question for the 3rd time. She had it all there. Everything I had seen. She had my cell phone number. She had my blank check.

"Je peux la laisser maintenant afin d'éviter le divorce?" I asked.

"Oui, vous pouvez la laisser," she replied, coming around the corner to take Rapide's leash. She had to drag her, speaking softly, encouragingly and kindly to Rapide, toward the door to the examination rooms, while I bolted for the door and the car.

It was 4:00 pm when we passed under the sign announcing the time to the Porte d'Orléans above the Périphe.

"20 minutes à la Porte d'Orléans," said my husband. "C'est bon."

It was 4:23 pm when the a movement in the car about to catch up to us in the fast lane caught our attention.

"Mais, c'est eux!" I exclaimed. Eux was the colleague to whose apartment we were heading to meet him, and where we would leave our car, and another colleague, our other traveling companion.

I felt a rush of self-satisfaction. No one (he) could say I'd put us behind schedule, despite an unanticipated stop at the vet's. Nonetheless, if anyone could find a way to find reason to complain, he was sitting next to me, and he was content. I am pretty sure he felt my glow, across the stick shift and the hand brake, on his side of the car.

The phone rang the next day, while we were collecting our ski passes and heading toward the téléphérique to the ski slopes at Avoriaz. The vet's office. Rapide had nothing. Nothing whatsoever other than a meaningless cyst not even worth the notice on one kidney that couldn't have anything to do with her condition. She was weak the day before, that they granted, but there was nothing physically wrong with her that could explain her inability (or refusal) to walk.

I asked about dysplasia. My husband threw daggers at me with his eyes.

"Mais quoi encore?" I asked, exasperated.

"On t'as dit qu'il n'y a rien, et tu continues à poser des questions. Il savent faire leur diagnostique, tu sais."

"Oui, mais j'ai du mal à comprendre," I replied, dépassée, "et je ne vois pas qu'on ne peut prendre trois secondes plus pour que je finisse avec le vetérinaire. J'ai quand même le droit de poser des questions!" But, I knew the answer to that already.

I was taking the vet's time. I had been told she had nothing; she had nothing. Get over it. You're not going to ever understand why this dog has started behaving this way, as far back as the first day in Chamonix a month ago, or why her temperature was so low one day, only to return to somewhat below but nearly normal the next day.

Oh well, I thought, even after Sam gave me the total for the check the receptionist had filled out. 180 euros to know your 10-year-old stubborn and lazy Labrador Retriever is perfectly healthy is already that much.

"Elle va bien," said my husband, when the question came up again this evening, my son having confirmed that she has walked perfectly normally ever since we left. "C'est le cerveaux qui règle la température du corps, et on sait qu'elle a un déjà un gros handicap là."

Ha ha ha.

And we made it up the mountain to ski back down. And we made it home. And, Rapide is just fine.

And all the building materials await.


....

Hello Frog!

The first frog

They're baaaack!

I knew if I were quiet enough today that I would see one. I was certain I had heard the characteristic "splosh, splosh" of two diving back into the water to escape being seen by me yesterday, and, sure enough, looking in exactly the place where I am most likely to catch one thinking he (or she) is outsmarting me, I saw through the algae a rear foot push off to get away, and then its head!

I know. I am using exclamation points to talk about frog sitings in my basin, but this is what I live for. This is why I live here. To squat by the side of the basin and watch for the frogs, take pictures of the frogs who have chosen to make this old fountain, turned into a fish and wildlife sanctuary quite accidentally by my husband years ago, when he first lived here, their home.

And this after we had to empty it, catching the poor frogs with a children's fish net I bought in the Finisterre for the purpose, and placing them into a makeshift home, while we located the leak that had killed so many of the fish in the terrible freeze of January 2009, and repaired the basin. Most of them jumped from the plastic tub I had also bought in an agricultural supply store in the Finisterre, also just for the purpose, but they returned, once the basin was restocked with its stones, plants, new fish from the local garden centers (our defunct Florosny and Truffaut), who made a new generation of fish, native to the basin, and the mud from the bottom that I had saved in pails, just for the frogs. At least those who would.

They also made lots of tadpoles we had the great pleasure of watching turn into baby frogs, who would go hibernate somewhere in the garden or beyond this first winter of their lives. Some will return to live in the basin, some will find elsewhere to live, many others will have perished in their travel to find a suitable place to winter.

That is nature.

This year, a new cycle begins, and I am right here to follow the progress with about the greatest joy, enthusiasm and sense of rightness in the little world around me that I can imagine. It isn't easy to describe this to people who haven't lived it, or who are used to finding pleasure in so much more, and I tend to protect it, not sure I can stand the looks of confusion or incomprehension I might see.

Anyone who wants to come squat by me, very quietly, and watch the frogs is welcome. Just please close your eyes if you should come into the house.
....

The puddle

Wetness

"Il y a de l'eau dans le petit salon," called my husband from where he was finishing up the balcony -- oh, hosannah -- last evening.

"Comment ça de l'eau dans le petit salon?" I asked.

"De l'eau, je te dis, de l'eau dans le petit salon." I wasn't deaf. I was looking for more precise information so that I could remain seated on the sofa and not worry at all.

Only I wasn't supposed to not worry. I was supposed to rush to the petit salon and see for myself.

"Où dans le petit salon?" I asked, climbing over the dog cushions Baccarat places directly in the middle of the path between the two armchairs, my voice climbing right alongside, to a pitch normally reserved for fishmongers' wives, and the only way to get to the other end of the house, if I don't want to trip over the basket of stuff for the fireplace. It's dangerous around here in the semi-dark. My husband has broken several expensive low-voltage light bulbs dropping his baladeuse, those lantern-type lights you can hang wherever you are laboring before lights (and electricity) are installed, onto the concrete slab, and slowly but surely, the living room has descended into darkness to feed his need for light bulbs.

I need to go to IKEA.

"Viens voir pour toi-même," he snapped back at me, raising my pulse another 40 BPM.

Water in a room where there is not supposed to be any water whatsoever is never something of which you want to be informed. Ever. Particularly not when you have just had a brand new concrete slab poured, and it is drying to receive a new solid oak floor so that your 1920's Johann Urbas blond mahogany piano can finally be delivered and you can stop worrying day and night that Monsieur is furious with you for delaying receiving it this long.

I peeked in. I didn't need to look. There, at my feet was a large puddle of water, filling some of the deepest paw prints Wisp left when she ran all over the room, panicked in the fresh concrete, looking for a corner in which to leave a poop. My heart rate rose another 40 BPM.

Disbelief.

The puddle spread out from the corner of the door into the room, deepest at that point, saturating the lovely new concrete in an expanding arc of wet. My brain set into overdrive, looking for an explanation. The garden hose? Could this be from the garden hose my brother-in-law had used during the afternoon to clean the dishwasher he brought us? There is so much water damage in the outside walls just a meter or so away across the entry, where the spigot it fixed to the wall, that it seemed entirely possible. I asked my husband what he thought, but he couldn't follow me.

"Quel tuyau?" I knew what he meant, the tuyau (pipe) from the plumbing leading to the outdoor robinet (spigot) or the tuyau de jardin (garden hose), but I thought I was being perfectly clear and was far beyond too agitated and aggravated to do anything but look exasperated and probably glare at him, which he never appreciates.

I ran outside to look at the ground, which was rather pointless, since hours had gone by, but I saw a chunk of the corner of the wall missing, the plastic mesh behind exposed, and right below it was the elbow from the gutter to the downspout, lying right next to the missing bit of chaux. I returned to the petit salon.

"Je n'aime pas de tout quand tu me parles comme ça," he informed me.

I knew, but it is so frustrating when they suddenly don't understand anything and you have to explain everything twice, when you don't even want to think it once, but I decided to change my tone. We had enough of a problem on our hands. I explained about the elbow and the bit of broken wall, but there was one thing that puzzled me.

"Mais, il a fait beau la semaine dernière. Pourquoi ça serait parterre?"

"Il a plu hier. Tu ne te souviens pas? Sam a pris la voiture car il pleuvait hier matin."

It was true. I had forgotten; after a week of beautiful weather, it had started to rain Friday evening and poured Saturday morning. The rainwater had brought down the elbow the workers can't seem to get fixed back into place again, which in turn had damaged the wall and saturated the ground with runoff from the roofs. Great. I looked at the puddle, a new idea forming.

"Ou, est-ce que ça peut être du pipi?" I wondered aloud, a whole new line of reasoning opening up to me. "A Baccarat fait pipi dans le petit salon?" I asked, dropping to my knees and placing my fingertips in the wet. I brought them to my nose. There was a faint odor of pee, but so faint as to cast doubt. From the quantity and the size of the wetness, I thought Baccarat -- besides, she had pooped in this room when she was a puppy and later, when she was sick during the night and didn't dare bark to get our attention.

She is very considerate.

I put my fingertips back in the puddle and moved them around (I have no idea why) several more times, sniffing them long and carefully again and again. Could the concrete itself give water the slight bite?

"Flaire ça," I said to my husband, rising back to my feet. He backed up as though I were about to stick possibly pipi covered fingers in his nostrils.

"Non!"

"Oui," I insisted. After all, I had sniffed it; why shouldn't he? "Je dois savoir ce que c'est. Alors, c'est du pipi ou non?" He relented, looking like he would not forgive me for some time.

"Non. Je ne pense pas que ça soit du pipi," he pronounced.

That was when I realized that I had never wished more that one of the animals had peed in the house, on my lovely, paw print covered concrete slab.

"T'es sur? Tu ne sens pas cette petite odeur métallique, du pipi?"

"Je ne pense pas."

Even if I would have to find some product to saturate the concrete to remove the hint of pee so that whoever had done this -- had someone and not something done this -- would never return to do it again once the oak flooring was installed. If it were one of the animals, then we didn't have a very serious water problem of which we had previously known nothing, hidden, as it would have been, by the floor itself.

I returned to wondering about the other possible sources of the wetness. Having grasped what I was trying to say about the possibility of the water saturating the ground adjacent to this area from the leaking garden hose possibly backing up enough to find its way onto the slab, 6 cm below the level of the finished floor between, from inside the thin rat slab on the back fill on which the terracotta tiles are set, with the help of the missing elbow on the gutter in pouring rain yesterday, he followed me onto another terrible possibility: we'd sprung a leak in the pipes leading to the spigot.

"Le compteur d'eau, il marche?" he asked.

I grabbed a flashlight and went to remove all the crap under the kitchen sink, smelling to high heaven from the water dumped from the hoses of the old dishwasher we had removed that afternoon; water that had been in those hoses for, oh, 7 years. At least I knew now why the house had smelled so foul all afternoon. I tried not to breathe and trained the beam on the water meter, making a mental note that I'd have to empty this out and clean it, thoroughly.

"Je ne peux rien voir sur ce nouveau compteur."

"Tu n'entends rien?"

"Non," I didn't hear any clicking noises.

"Alors, ce n'est pas une fuite."

And, because the level of the finish floor is actually two steps above ground level outside, it was also extremely unlikely that this was from the garden hose and spigot, unless the spigot was running back into the house when its turned on, as well as into the garden hose attached to it.

Still.

The pipi possibility was looking more and more likely. And the likely culprit was looking more and more like Shadow, whose two siblings have died of kidney failure.

"Si c'est l'un des animaux, c'est Shadow," said my husband. "Depuis un moment, elle refuse d'aller dans la litière et va toujours dehors. Peut-être elle a été bloquée dans la maison et a cherché un endroit pour faire."

It was possible that she had chosen this area in which to pee, being stuck in the house and needing to go, and remembering when it was the rubble backfill before the concrete pour, but even more likely was that this was a case of cat turf warfare: Wisp had poohed here, and so she was countering with a puddle of pee. The French doors had been open a fair amount of the afternoon and she yowls when she wants to go outside.

"Oui," I nodded, "probablement Shadow." She wanted to go inside to get back at Wisp.

I had already written to Monsieur in the midst of this episode to throw my hands into the air and tell him of my defeat at getting this room ready for the piano, and offering to accept delivery to the living room and find a way later to move the piano to the petit salon, if I ever managed to get it under control, and here it was, probably a big old puddle of cat pee.

Why does life suck so much sometimes, and why can't the damn cats just get along?
....

Little beauties

The view of the mess from where I sit, these days

My youngest stepdaughter once asked me why I like it so dark in the house.

"Parce qu'on ne voit pas la saleté comme ça." Double bonus, not only does the dimness of the house with few lights other than candlelight mask the dust and the dog fur, it also allows me to tell myself that the piles of stuff I have nowhere to put even when I am not renovating one room of the two or three available to us is not really there, just behind and piled on the other sofa.

And I remember the day when that one little lamp on the ledge over the radiator seemed like a huge improvement, replacing, as it did, an old one whose decorative stitching on the dusty and soiled lampshade was coming undone from its punched holes. Someone once told me to be grateful for small things. It was, clearly, someone who had never had very much, either. My natural habitat.

I got up an hour ago and took the dogs out to pee, still in my ancient terrycloth bathrobe. The one I got when I was finally able to paint our railroad apartment in Greenwich and buy things like new bed linens and towels at Bloomie's, feeling better about our housing, but mostly trying not to still feel embarrassed in that town, where no one with my background started out in an attic studio above an alcoholic with maybe the best and the worst of intentions. I chose to concentrate on the better ones.

The workers finishing up turning the old two-room elementary school across the street into three apartments (the teacher's two-story apartment behind the classrooms, one above the other at the front, becoming a duplex), turned on their upturned paint cans, where they were gathered in the sun to have lunch, watched me return to the gate, calling my dogs. They were both off-leash. Daring for a woman in an old terrycloth bathrobe in the middle of the village, but it's mostly a ghost town at 12:30 pm. Except the workers. I was covered, well past my knees and up to my chin, the belt cinched tight. I did my best to exude dignity.

Something I find myself doing more than I'd like.

It was warm. I noticed it first the other night, when I took the dogs out for the last time for the night, coming home from dinner in Paris at Le Carré aux Feuillants on the rue Castiglione, just below the Place Vendôme. A clear evening had turned damp, tiny droplets of water suspended in the air all around us, shimmering in the streetlights and on the tops of our cars. I should have felt a chill; instead, I smelled the earth. Baccarat's nose and mine both worked the damp night air: spring.

All week, the temperatures have risen, to a glorious 64° F yesterday.

"That's t-shirt weather for Parisians," my son told our old friends, visiting from Greenwich. I think that it is t-shirt weather for everyone but those living in sub-Saharan Africa, I thought, but I didn't say anything. It's true that Parisians wear their coats and jackets, buttoned up to the the foulards they wear wrapped around their tasteful, elegant throats, nearly to Bastille Day and get their turtlenecks out as soon as the screen on their Blackberry or iPhone announces September, no matter the temperature.

They do not perspire.

The t-shirts are saved for the grassy areas under the monuments and along the Seine, where they carefully remove the outer layers for public show and expose their skin for the sun warming the stones of the city. In some cases, all skin not covered by the bottom half of a string bikini only. It's the Côte d'Azur's preseason warm-up.

Safe again from the regards des ouvriers inside my house, I thought about how disappointed my husband would be in me that I had done it again, rather than pull on my jeans, retrieving an old sweater from the floor of our room to go out, and opened the kitchen window to let the spring breeze carry the birdsong and the sounds of the péniches in from the Seine, the metal shutters warm in my hands. It's a lovely moment. Later, inside the house, it feels just a little too chilly, the weak sun never really penetrating far enough inside to warm the farther wall, against which I sit to type away on my laptop on the sofa.

I padded from the coffee machine to turn on the computer and head to the WC, followed by Rapide, who does not recognize my right to pee in private, since I accompany her on most of her trips to relieve herself -- she must think it is only considerate of her -- and thought even more obsessively about my ill ease and embarrassment, the twin themes of a life on the shy side of the success that those around me seemed to receive with ease as their due, while I buttress my self-esteem with good temper, trying not to feel more like the well-educated au pair than an equal.

Self-pity and pity. I do not brook either, and I have many well-developed and questionably adequate shielding strategies, which rely mostly on sheer strength of will.

And I know my husband is completely immune to this, and so I am embarrassed even telling him how much it affects me. When I do, he says, "Mais, tu n'habites plus aux States. Tu n'as plus à te sentir mal, et tes amis, ils te connaissent, ils t'acceptent."

"Oui," I allow, "mais, j'en ai encore un pied dans l'autre système, et eux, ils viennent de ça. Il n'est pas facile de se reconnaitre dans le système duquel tu viens et de te détacher."

It's hard. Even if those friends who know you appreciate you and accept you, they are part of that system; it isn't easy to be in and out of it at the same time, and it comes back to remind you that you cannot ever make a part of your experience go away. You cannot make go away the pity felt by those who watched you live, as happy as you were, with your small son in an attic studio. Pity felt can never be taken away. It sticks to you like stale cigarette smoke from a night you wished you'd just skipped.

But, he is French, and this mostly explains it. He comes from an old family with old French values. French values, period, actually. Social class systems and the lack of elevators between the floors seem to go a long way to helping people feel comfortable, even if it prompts unbearable bouts of rudeness from time to time. Quite simply, you know who you are and where you belong, and it mostly works. Few of my countrymen would defend it, at least if they have never lived in such a place for very long. You do not have to be wealthy if you are born of an old family; you do not have to be ill at ease if you chose a bac pro in plumbing or electrician's work to take over your father's business. You might become a doctor or a lawyer, instead, but if you do, you need only be successful at school; you do not need money. The government will pay your studies. You will pay your fees -- 400 euros a year --, and then you will have the status of your profession, your family's friends will always be yours. No one will ask how large is your home.

No one will ask where you pay your country club dues. Or not ask, knowing already that you don't.

No one will pay much attention to the car you drive. (Except my son.)

And the friends who pitied you liked you and your child, only they could not truly be friends with you because friendship is reserved for equals where money counts.

Once, when he was about 7, I took my son to The American History Museum at the Smithsonian. I thought we would be safe here, in contemplation of the past, society at a safe remove, but I received a jolt. There was a part that described the life of women during the late Industrial Revolution, and one sign said that the wives of the great industrialists were expected to manage a staff of domestic workers to make a lovely home in which to raise their children and entertain the powerful guests of their husbands. The wives of the working class, on the other hand, were expected to tend to their children, do the domestic chores, possibly take in paying work and handle, often, the financial matters of the family.

What was there here that I should teach my son, who would hear the lesson the panel sought to teach and ask, "But, isn't that just like you, Mom?"

I checked the date on the panel again to make sure it didn't really say "late 20th century America" instead of late "19th century America".

Who, I asked myself, wrote these signs, and just how out of touch were they with what any social historian studying the Victorian era could observe of his or her present-day United States of America, or England for that matter?

I knew who I was, and I recognized my friends. We had the same diplomas from the same schools, but we were not of the same caste in class-free, materialist America. Education and upbringing had placed us in proximity, social experience and habit had kept us apart.

"Mais," say my friends and family here, "tu parles des langues étrangères, tu as fait des grandes écoles, tu as voyagé, comment ne peux pas tu mériter le respect de n'importe qui?"

Could there ever be any doubt about why I prefer my new home?

And maybe my discomfort and sense of isolation live on only in my soul, like the transgressions of Dorian Gray on his portrait, only much less twisted because it is not intentional, merely the result of life and the kinds of hurts that no one else is supposed to see. It makes them, you know, uncomfortable.

And maybe it is complicated only in my weed patch of hurts from past indignities.

"Of course, we want to see your house and garden," say friends who come to visit.

I dread that, and it makes me realize that perhaps I have kept this blog as a way to bolster my courage, tell the truth without having to risk showing it face to face, to find a way to show the little beauties that keep me going, like Anaïs Nin used her journals to make a novel of her life, finding pattern and meaning in it, and making it bearable in turn.

It was 2:55 am when I pulled down gently the covers on my side of the bed. My husband pushed up on one elbow and turned to try to see the face of the digital alarm clock on the floor below my pillow.

"Il est quelle heure?" What on earth time is it that you are finally coming home and to bed? I would not get defensive.

"Il est bientôt 3 heures du matin." I slid into bed.

"Mais c'est à cette heure-ci que tu rentres? Et Sam, lui aussi se couche si tard?" On a school night, he might have added.

"Je suis là depuis un moment," I exaggerated. "J'ai sorti les chiennes, me suis préparé un bol de chocolat chaud --"

"Mais, c'est pas possible," he said, or something like that.

"Bon," I replied, "On peut toujours démanager à Paris. Ca serait plus facile, non?"

All our friends and family live there, or a lot closer, but this I chose not to add. He knows. He rolled over and swore at the little cat, trying to get under the covers between our heads. I scooped her up, put her on the other side of mine, placed my arm in a defensive posture to keep her from trying that again, held my tongue and thought about the novel the name of which I always forget -- even the author of which I misplace in my memory. It's the one from the period of England's early industrial revolution in which a local doctor falls disastrously in love with the daughter of a wealthy country family. He courts her and wins her love, and then he spends everything they have and beyond to make a home suitable for the lifestyle to which she is born.

There is a single paragraph that is permanently and indelibly etched onto my psyche. The rest of the novel is scenery and story to describe the consequences of this one paragraph that told how it is the china and silver set and the linens upon which you place them that determine whether you may receive those around you. It is not the care that goes into the preparation of the dishes you will place upon whatever you have to serve them, nor is it the conversation you can share that entitle you to participate in society. Oh! How we have descended from our English forebears!

I thought about that all the years we lived in our apartment, with the little porch on the back that looked out over the road in front of the projects, the path to the living room out one of the two front doors in the dim entry corridor at the front of the building and back into the other, or through my bedroom, giving me the choice to turn my bedroom into a sitting room, knowing anyone else would know it had to be where I slept, when I wasn't pretending I had a bedroom somewhere else, or leave it the way it was. In either case, I didn't have the dining room, the china and the silver setting, the linens and the living room I needed to participate.

We could always move to Paris and live in its equivalent of a Greenwich railroad flat, I thought, drifting off to sleep, or we could stay here, where I can keep struggling with myself, anyway, returning from visiting friends and family, driving back up the long black-topped corridor from Paris in the dead of the night.

"It wasn't cheap to take the kids to dinner and bowl," said my son, out of the dark at my side, where he was driving the Fiat home after 2 am.

"No, it isn't cheap to take your kids out for a fun evening," even if the prices are not exorbitant.

One more step into adult consciousness.

There is no hell worse than the one you make for yourself. Or, is that not the very nature and definition of hell?
....

You spray it, you wipe it

The blackened microfiber cloth

And the black filth and -- mold? -- is on the cloth. My special micro fiber cloth that is, kind of like a Gleen Green Cleaning Cloth, only maybe not quite as good. I don't know. I didn't think not to use the green cleaning products I buy at the local supermarket on this dirt.

Check out the radio jingle. I'd hate to get that stuck in my head.

I saw them hanging in bunches of 5, their lurid colors turning the head. A video vaunting their prowess played in the middle. I watched it from beginning to end.

They're only 5 euros, myself nudged me.

"I know. I can't really go wrong, can I?" Myself shook her head, and I reached for my bunch of cloths in lavender, hot pink, neon green, traffic yellow and sky blue and headed on over to quincaillerie to order my two window security grills, a little embarrassed by the screaming colors in my left hand.

Well, who's embarrassed now? Not I.

I was able to do the entire house of windows with a single cloth, rather than a whole roll of recycled paper paper towels, and only one nail got destroyed from the scraping, but it didn't go through the cloth. Imagine.

The problem with cleaning windows, though, is that once they are done, you realize how shameful it was that they ever got that way in the first place, and that it isn't going to last. I'll need to find the courage to do it again far too soon, although they at least won't be covered with splatters of chaux and the residue from the paint stripper I used to take off several decades of layers of paint. I whined to myself all the way through it.

Wimp, said myself.

"I am not."

Yes, you are. Myself sounded too sure of herself for my comfort.

I leave that for you to judge for yourself.

The problem? If we can see out now that the window treatment -- ahem -- is gone, the workers across the street can now see in, too. At least there's still not much to see. For now.

Note the scrim of dirt before.

Meanwhile, the workers are gone. Again. But, we have a quote for the front steps. The only problem is that I can't figure out how to get the dogs out if we do them and the slab for the new kitchen entry at the same time. We'll need a ramp system over the fresh concrete, or else it will be far worse than Wisp's paws in her pooping perambulations.
....

Un massacre

The 1868 mailbox

That's what Georges called the patina he and his semi-functional assistant applied to the natural-colored chaux (what we call "natural stucco") he put around the mailbox. A massacre.

I agree with Georges, but where I take issue is I would call everything they have done in the last week, and not just this butchered patch job, a massacre.

And the rest just takes my breath and typing fingers away.

Georges tapped on the living room French door.

"Madame Sisyphe," you know he doesn't call me that; he uses my last name," je peux rentrer?" I motioned for him to come in. He cut to the chase. They were leaving, promising -- just like last September -- to return as soon as he had the brick for the paving. Promises, promises, and I think I'm going to be sick.

Some of you will get that reference. I wore white. My first long dress. It was 1970. I drove my mother and my soon to be or just stepfather nuts all the way home from the theater, the seed planted for later harvest.

Or not.

The rest of the conversation in that moment was a blur. I think we went outside directly, where he started to make the rounds of what had been ticked off the list of contract items left to be done, and what they were not going to do. Naturally.

We always get to this point. You can count on it, just like you can count on another recitation of why this project has gone so badly, and how unfair it has all been to them, and how we have gotten such a great deal, "malgré", he added quickly this time, "tout le stresse." he really wanted me to think it had all been worthwhile "malgré" the misery and suffering, the stress and the hardship on the "nerfs". I didn't race to reassure him that it had.

I am not at all sure that it was.

"Mais demandez autour de vous. Personne ne fait ce genre de travail." Or, "We had you over a barrel," in other words. This he knows I know, except that one local mason actually is familiar with the technique of mixing the pigment into the stucco.

"Oui," dit-il, "il sait ce que c'est, mais --" Could they have done it? I don't know, but I'd nearly just as soon have painted the house with a toothbrush and a single can of house paint than have Joachim and Georges dominate our lives with their cinoche (slang for "cinéma", meaning "their act") for two years.

He had led me out to the planting bed along the far edge of the top terrace, turning to gaze at the house. He wanted to talk about the leak again, insisting that it came from the chimney, which I already knew. It's what I had told him all along, and it is part of redoing the exterior of the house to make sure that it is watertight. Those are not extras, and if you consider them extras, you are obligated to bring them up as a professional, not bacler le travail and wait for the client to tell you water pours into an upper bedroom every time it rains hard.

He disagreed. Most politely of course. Oh, and there was the roof.

"Madame Sisyphe, le toit, vous le voyez, il n'est vraiment pas bien. Il faut le refaire." I had heard this before, from him. Funny that the roofer who has worked in the house and who lived in the village says it's fine. A little wavy, but. I remember, too, having taken Georges up to the attic to inspect the original timber trusses holding it up. He had been obligated to acknowledge that they were in perfect condition, but today, here he was, pointing to the ridge of the roof over the newer part that juts forward.

"Voyez le faite? Il n'est pas droit. Il est fait en zinc, et avec le vent, il se lève. L'eau rentre."

"Georges, on n'a pas de problème de pénétration d'eau à cet endroit. C'est près de la cheminée que le problème existe." He wasn't going to be easily put off.

"Oui, mais je vous le dit, l'eau rentre là et ça touche la charpente."

"Et alors, ça fait quoi? C'est le grenier. Il n'est pas fini et c'est airé. La charpente et saine. Vous l'avez vu et vous l'avez dit vous-même." What he wants is a contract to replace the roof.

What he is not getting is a contract to replace the roof. Not now, not ever. We continued to look at the house.

"Il reste, bien sur, la patine sur les murs qui sont trop clairs." It figured in the contract to apply a chaux-based patina to the walls that had come out too light, so that the house would be of a the deep ocher where the walls had turned out to be a washed out yellowish color. This Joachim had insisted was possible and promised when we pointed out that the walls didn't match, back in October 2008. He didn't swear the life of his son, as Georges did at least three times this afternoon, but he was adamant, and righteously indignant when we expressed our reservations. He had even signed the revised contract in July that promised this element of work.

"Mais, Madame Sisyphe, on ne peut pas. C'est pas possible." My eyes bugged out of their sockets. My mouth turned suddenly very dry. My ears began to hum. It was not possible to use the chaux-based patina to make the walls the right color as promised?

"Ce n'est pas possible? Ce n'est pas possible, vous dites, quand Joachim prétend depuis plus qu'un an que cela ne représente aucun problème? Ca veut dire quoi?"

"Mais c'est normal. La chaux est appliqué sur des supports différents alors elle ne va pas réaggir de la même manière tout autour de la maison."

I had heard this all before. He had heard this all before. He had been there when Joachim had told us how this would be handled at the end of the job by applying the patina to the walls. I let him have it, and he did what he always does: he stood there and took it, until I had finished and he could speak again. Which he did.

"Vous devez voir autour de la boite aux lettres où j'ai mis la patine. C'est un vrai massacre."

I did not go immediately and look at the massacred chaux around the mailbox. There were other things he was claiming we had refused and, therefore, they did not need to do, such as the chimney for which the brick I had gone all the way to Montlhéry, south of Paris, with a representative from Wienerberger to select in person in their warehouse so they could order and install it. I felt the earth start to rush up at me, but I refused. I would stand there and I would set him straight. I would take it like a big girl and give it back like an Amazon, like Buffy the Vampire Slayer. When they had told us that the chimney was cracked, the old cement on it rotten and the bricks behind crumbling into paste, I had asked them to add that to the estimate, along with several other adds, which they did, and which we accepted.

Not only did we accept it, we had paid for it, along with the other items.

"Mais, Madame Sisyphe," insista-t-il, looking perfectly shocked, "si vous l'avez accepté et vous l'avez payé, vous n'avez pas trouvé ça pas normal qu'on ne l'a pas fait?" He was seriously asking me, after all that we have been through, if I didn't find it abnormal that we had paid for work we had never gotten.

Serious.

"Georges," I narrowed my newly bugged-out eyes and raised my jaw from the floor and into motion to speak, "ça ne serait franchement pas la première chose qui nous choque depuis que vous avez commencé les travaux."

Ah la la la la.

"Mais vous n'avez payé que la brique."

"Georges, quand vous faites un prix pour la cheminée, ce prix n'est pas pour les matériaux mais pour le main d'oeuvre et les matériaux. Si nous l'avons accepté et nous l'avons payé, nous avons payé pour le travail et les matériaux, alors."

"Mais, est-ce que vous avez la facture?" Every sentence begins with "but". But, do you have the bill?

"Savez, Georges, c'est notre banquière qui a cette facture, et elle l'a mise aux archives car elle a cru que les travaux ont du être terminés tellement longtemps vous avez mis pour les éffectuer. Elle se souvenait d'une durée des travaux de quelques mois, pas de quelques années." He looked somewhere between amused, embarrassed and sheepish. As usual.

Our banker really did transfer the entire file to the archives. She really did think, after so many months without the presentation of another bill from the contractor, that we had finished. Long ago. She called me on the phone the day I finally sent her another one, to ask what it was. I had been extremely confused. How could our banker not understand that it was a bill for the work on our house that we were submitting for payment from our loan. I had explained the whole story to her, and she had listened in silence, and then offered her sympathy.

"Je verserai l'argent pour la somme de la facture dans votre compte immédiatement," she had assured me, simultaneously reassuring me that some people do their jobs effectively.

So, he had cleaned up a bit more of their mess, loaded it on the truck, waiting out on the sidewalk along with Igor at the edge of my peripheral view, to head back à la rue des Pas Perdus, and was hoping for me to tell him everything would be alright, that I accepted everything he said, and here we were, having the usual parting conversation.

"Bon, Madame Sisype, si vous dites que vous l'avez payé ça doit être vrai. Vous n'avez aucune raison de me mentir --" damn straight I have no reason to lie; I don't need to. "Je verrai aussi au bureau. On doit avoir une copie de la facture."

So, he will look for the bill, the proof that they had billed us for the work on the chimney and that we had paid. Meanwhile, I have another 6 m2 of bricks for the wall he insisted they were never going to do once we had told them it was too high a price, and Georges had told me, But, it's too late to cancel the brick order. We'll lower the price. Just the brick, Madame Sisyphe?

And now, here I was, understanding that he had always intended to make us pay for the brick, deliver it and leave it, sitting in our garden, at the edge of my peripheral vision.

And the chaux and patina around the mailbox? It is a massacre.

We'll let them keep going, and, then, when they ask for the balance due on the contract, we'll point out just what was not done "to the satisfaction of the client", and we'll make them our final offer: do it now to our entire satisfaction, or take this amount, sign that you agree to accept it and cut your losses, and be done.


....

Intention to work

Grill at "petit salon"

This could be -- I said could be, conditional tense, not even existential yet --, the dénouement, of this long and regrettable saga with the renovation company with which we contracted to renovate "this old house".

Would it be superfluous to say how much we regret it, having said that the saga is "regrettable"?

The worst, though, and here I must ask you to keep this to yourself, is that I haven't found another mason in the area who would have known how to do the work this way. That was why I hired these guys, and why we have suffered through the hell to the hoped for bitter end. One guy said he was familiar with it all and knew where to get the materials. He's on my long-list for future repairs to the work.

The letter from a lawyer friend of my brother-in-law went out just before we left for Argentière in the Mont Blanc Valley. The timing wasn't excellent, but I didn't think we could credibly let another week go by. Too many already had since they packed up at the end of September, swearing they'd be back as soon as they had the brick for the paving, in early November. We'd been through this with them before, the work having begun in July 2008, and it now being early 2010. Several times.

The letter solicited a spirited and error-ridden message from Joachim, Georges' cousin and probably the legal head of the company, until he was likely forbidden from ever running a company in his name again and had to have Georges sign the papers, at least in name, which is forbidden in France, but that's just an ace up our sleeve, should we ever require an ace. At least that's our best educated guess from his insistence on acting like the boss whenever we are forced to threaten legal action to get them moving. He called our lawyer, who listened to him for a quarter of an hour and then told him that his time was up; he had other things to do. Au revoir, Monsieur.

Click.

I can just imagine Joachim's stunned Cro-magnon face, listening to the silence. Once he starts talking, there is nearly no stopping him.

"Il t'a appelé pour t'embrouiller," said my brother-in-law to his friend.

"Personne ne m'embrouille," said my new hero to my brother-in-law, for that is Joachim's goal: get you on his side by talking a mile a minute, telling his favorite version of the facts, and mixing everything and everyone up. Only, he was forgetting one thing. He was calling our lawyer.

We ignored him.

I called Georges instead, even though my brother-in-law offered to for me, to save me the displeasure and play to their machismo. A businessman with a background in law, he is tougher than my husband, who now recognizes that we never, ever should have given them the 50% on the contract renegotiated last July prior to the work being completed to our entire satisfaction. Georges stared at me when I looked at him directly in the eyes last September and said, "Je tiens à vous dire -- devant mon mari -- que je ne suis pas d'accord. Je ne vous donnerai rien puisqu'un contrat c'est un contrat, et vous n'avez pas satisfait les termes du contract." His mouth hung open several seconds after I finished, and I made sure to pointedly include my husband in my penetrating regard.

No answer. I called again the next day, getting him after the first ring. I was so surprised, I had to collect myself before remembering how to speak. He promised to call back. That's my recollection, anyhow.

He didn't.

I left for the mountains, and I waited to hear from the lawyer.

The next Monday, I tried again. He answered.

"Bonjour, Georges. Vous ne l'avez pas répondu, je tiens à vous faire remarquer."

"Je sais." He acknowledged it; he hadn't called me back. "Quand est-ce que vous serez là?"

"Jeudi prochain, et je vous attendrai pour ce jour là."

"On sera là."

Brief. They'd be there Thursday. In the end, I added a day and gave them the choice, Friday or Monday.

Yesterday, Monday the 8th, Baccarat barked. They were there. Georges and a man I am not sure knows how to speak. He has more than likely been instructed not to fraternize with the enemy, although Georges and I have resumed our resigned "we sort of appreciate each other because we don't have against personal against one another and this really sucks" -- even though I think he does play a little game with his cousin and is smarter than he seems -- attitude. It gets us through the days.

They unloaded the brick that has been sitting at Point P in Saint-Ouen L'Aumône for months, and the silent one installed the grill on the window of the petit salon and then started in on the joints in the brick pillars, while Georges complained about having to do the details they have left until now, before going off to put the old postal mailbox back in the wall. For some reason, it is surrounded by natural colored chaux.

And then he appeared at the door.

"Madame, les grilles pour les petites fenêtres, on les installe? Où est l'autre?" he asked, leading me around to the pile of wallboard ready to go to the dump by the gate the wind tore off its rusted hinges while I was away, sending it flying into the street.

"On ne les remettera pas," I told him. They are ugly, don't match each other, let alone the others around the house.

"Ah bon? On fait quoi alors?" I shrugged.

"Vous sauriez pas où je peux trouver d'autres rapidement?"

"Leroy Merlin." The solution to everything. It's like saying "Home Depot". Not exactly special, but I am running out of energy myself. So, Leroy Merlin it would be, if they had anything remotely decent.

I checked today. They did. Or I am just worn down and out. They are ordered.

At 4:27 pm, Georges announced they would be back in the morning with the door handles and lock for the gate. He had hunted up the bronze numbers for the pillar from where he had left them, somewhere among the bushes in the planting border (makes sense, right?), and the little bell. I had to help him locate the lamp from above the entry door. He'd left it behind a cedar tree. It was covered with spiderwebs and cedar twigs.

"Je la nettoyerai," he promised, looking a little sheepish.

This morning, they were back and accomplished so little as to have made the drive over hardly worthwhile. I didn't even see more than the silent one, working on the joints (this could take a year at the rate he is going), until just before they both disappeared, Georges moving briefly into my line of sight while talking on his cell phone (his main occupation), leaving the keys on the inside of the lock Georges installed on the gate.

He wouldn't be avoiding me, would he?

And, speaking of intentions to work, Sam began January with some of his own, even if it was without conviction and involved an interpersonal struggle. Two, actually: Sam against Sam and Sam against his mother. I didn't budge. His bac is a minimum, and it's time to stop laying it all on the teachers. I met them. They aren't that bad.

Yesterday, Sam came home from school, a little more bounce in his step that usual.

"Hey, Sam, how was your day?" I sounded like Deborah Reynolds.

"Okay," he said. Okay? Okay? He never says that. It's always, "It sucked." I looked at him. "I had three grades today, and they were pretty good, or, well, at least they were better. They were tests just like the bac, and if it were the bac, they would probably be even better." That's true. His school grades extra harshly, to leave them nervous and insecure until the bac, certain that is the best way to guaranty a better result on the bac than they would get were they to grade more in line with the bac graders.

Unh-hunh.

He told me what he'd gotten in Spanish, History and Geography and English.

"I would have had a perfect grade in English, except I spelled 'piece' wrong. I spelled it 'p-i-e-a-c-e'."

"You put an 'a' in 'piece'? How did that happen?" I asked, filled with wonder.

Easy now that I think about it. All you have to do is think "piece" and "peace" and combine them in your excitement over one of the few perfect grades you will ever have in your experience in lycée.


....

Sunbathing, koi carp style

Staying warm on a cold March day

It's disconcerting, to say the very least (if you care about your fish) to see a koi carp keeping warm at the bottom of your fish pond. They look, in a word, poorly, if not outright possibly dead down there in the algae.

They are keeping warm, you know.

At least, that's what I tell myself. To be absolutely certain, I pick up an absolutely dead frond from the Japanese horsetail and poke near the fish. If it moves, I breathe.

It always moves. That's how I know to continue breathing anytime I see one in this posture.

Today, I saw the multicolored one on the bottom, and it was while photographing him (please forgive me if you are a female; maybe I will learn this about you this mating season) that I saw the gold one, shining in the sun on the other side of the rock against which they were both wedged, down in the algae, for warmth on its sun south-facing side. That's why I left the surface plants to rot over the winter and the algae to proliferate a bit; this provides shelter for the fish and the frogs wintering in the southernmost zone of the basin.

Still, it has been confusing for them, since a warmer day alternates with a cold and blowy one. Sometimes at this time of the year, I can be out cleaning up the garden and preparing it for the season in my shirtsleeves, but this year, that is out of the question. I'm still in sweaters and my winter coat, although I am not actually working in the garden, preoccupied as I must be with the house and the drawings for the woodwork in the petit salon, while the garden is left to its own devices. I think the man from whom I bought the piano is more than mildly tiffed by my not having taken delivery yet, since he hasn't replied to any of my emails, so I had better make it worthwhile, n'est-ce pas?

At least the sun is true to March standards, and despite a thin sheet of ice on the surface of the fish basin, the fish are comfortable down in their watery abode.

On the warm days, the whole band darts about, and they even eat.
....

Run, Sisyphe, run

Running feet

I'll be keeping these shoes for awhile now that I know that all those gel pads and special features aren't worth the fortune the running shoe companies ask you to fork over to protect your feet and make them (the shoe companies, not your feet) fabulously wealthy, while you suffer aches and pains thanks to them.

What happened? My friend David showed up in January with a pair of Vibram fivefingers shoes and told me to get myself a copy of Running World writer Christopher McDougall's book, Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen. Since he adopted the "barefoot" running technique, he could run distances he'd never been able to before. Curious, I went straight to Amazon.co.uk and ordered a copy.

So, what's it all about? Here's Washington Post's Dan Zak's review of Born to Run.

In his first book, journalist and former war correspondent Christopher McDougall suggests -- or proves, depending on your degree of skepticism -- that running extremely long distances barefoot is the key to health, happiness and longevity. Brand-name footwear, with its gel-based cushioning and elaborate architecture of super-advanced support, is a common cause of athletic injury, he argues. And running steadily for hours at a time is not only therapeutic but also natural. Primitive humans did it constantly, catching and killing quarry simply by exhausting them in a marathon hunt. Reading all this is enough to make a modern American feel fat, stupid and lazy, especially given the hyper-toned, swift-footed focus of "Born to Run," an operatic ode to the joys of running.

McDougall's subject is the Tarahumara, a tribe living frugally in the remote, foreboding Copper Canyons in the Mexican state of Chihuahua. The Tarahumara are legendary for their ability to run extreme distances in inhospitable conditions without breaking a sweat or getting injured. They are superathletes whose diet (pinole, chia seeds, grain alcohol) and racing method (upright posture, flicking heels, clear-headedness) would place them among elite runners of the developed world even though their society and technology are 500 years behind it. It's a fascinating subject, and the pages of "Born to Run" are packed with examples of McDougall's fascination. Running is his religion (he's a contributing editor at Men's Health magazine and has written for Runner's World), and he approaches the sport with the reverence and awe of a disciple encountering the face of his god. In this case, the god is the Tarahumara.

The book flows not like a race but like a scramble through an obstacle course. McDougall wends his way through the history and physiology of running, occasionally digressing into mini-profiles of top-tier racers and doctors, spinning off into tangents about legendary races like the Leadville Trail 100 Ultramarathon, while always looping back to the main narrative. Back on course, he describes his pursuit of the bashful, elusive Tarahumara and their secret to success on foot; his befriending of an eccentric gringo who became part of the tribe and is the key to McDougall's communication with it; and the realization of the eccentric's dream to pit big-name, corporate-sponsored American marathoners against the near-primeval Indians in a super ultra-marathon in the Copper Canyons. A race to end all races, in other words. A sprint to the finish between old and new.

The scenario is a writer's dream. McDougall found a large cast of crazy characters, an exotic setting for drama and discovery, and a tailor-made showdown with which to cap the book. By and large it's a thrilling read, even for someone who couldn't care less about proper stride and split times and energy gels. McDougall's prose, while at times straining to be gonzo and overly clever, is engaging and buddy-buddy, as if he's an enthusiastic friend tripping over himself to tell a great story. He writes, for example, of a fellow-runner who "sluiced sweat off his dripping chest and flung it past me, the shower of droplets sparkling in the blazing Mexican sun."

A relentless and experienced reporter, McDougall dramatizes situations he did not directly witness, and he does so with an intimacy and an exactness that may irk discerning readers and journalistic purists. "Born to Run" uses every trick of creative nonfiction, a genre in which literary license is an indispensable part of truth-telling. McDougall has arranged and adrenalized his story for maximum narrative impact. Questions crop up about the timing of events and the science behind the drama, but it's best to keep pace with him and trust that -- separate from the narrative drama -- we're actually seeing a glimpse of running's past and how it may apply to the present and the future. McDougall makes himself a character in the book without distracting from the story. He's our hero, a runner stricken with injuries until he began investigating the Tarahumara, who led him to startling revelations about the way we run and the way they run. McDougall finds that running is a danger if done incorrectly and a salvation if done properly. The stories he tells of the Tarahumara and of the world's greatest mainstream runners all herald a return to the basics: running barefoot or with the cheapest, flattest sole possible; and running not for money or celebrity or victory but for camaraderie and the sheer joy of using our bodies for a basic, essential purpose.

Born to Run" is an examination of sport, an allegory of cross-cultural understanding and a catalogue of philosophies of living. At this point in history, life is not necessarily about the survival of the fittest, or even survival of the fastest. We're past survival now; there's no need to run down prey or outrun a predator. But that's no reason, McDougall says, to stay rooted to the couch.

Copyright 2009, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

I'd say that's pretty accurate, and completely taken with the book's story, I read parts aloud to Sam in our hotel room, while we recovered from our days skiing down the bowls of Grands Montets. Home last evening, I decided to see if my friend's experience wasn't a fluke and if the method McDougall describes can work for this old distance-fearing half-hearted, wishful, wanna be runner, so I put on my old Asics and set out the door into the night. Closing the gate behind me, I set my heart rate monitor, gave myself a few words of encouragement and started up the street.

Stay on your toes, myself said to me. Like you're running uphill, right?

"What if my feet or calves start to cramp?"

Just do it. Myself can be pretty funny. That's Nike's, the nemesis of barefoot running and marketer of evil-doing super-cushioned running shoes, motto. I shrugged. I can't wear their shoes, but I've always liked their slogan. I took a few first springy steps on my toes, and to keep myself on them, I chose the left at the fork at the end of the street, following Grand Rue up to the top of the ridge rather than the rue de la Charrière à Vie down to the Chemin de Vétheuil (my usual route). The old blond lab was at his post behind the fence of the house halfway up on the left, barking like a madman at me as I bounced "easily and lightly" past him. I'll get to "smooth and fast" later, I said to him, after telling him to shut up. Nicely.

That's the rotten part about running around here, other than the wild boars (which I'll get to later): one dog starts barking and sets off the entire countryside round abouts, just like in 101 Dalmations. Like it's important news that a lone woman is trotting past their fences and on the way to those farther on.

"Ca suffit," I growl at them on the way past. "Tais-toi!" That's enough. Be quiet.

At the top, and not yet in pain, I turned onto the "Transamazonienne", the "new" road that cuts a path from the N13 from Rosny sur Seine to Bonnières sur Seine to the Base de Loisirs, just before Lavacourt, the village from which Monet painted the church of Vétheuil across the Seine. The construction of the new road was intended to deflect traffic from our small village up onto the ridge, which had the sad consequence of draining the pizza restaurant and café just before our house of customers, and closing its doors. The owner still lives in an apartment next to it, while a couple has come to give the spot a second go as a bar and restaurant. Seems to be working well enough for them to stay in business. We have apologized for never coming there for a meal. I did once go over and have a grand café one morning, when I had no more coffee at home.

Trotting on down the gentle slope, as the ridge seeks the riverbank in Lavacourt, I checked my form: abs strong, back tall, legs under my hips, kick back from my toes, the balls of my feet taking my weight, letting the 26 bones and all those tendons in my arches do their job. I imagined my feet flexing and absorbing my weight, reduced by the work I asked my abs to do, running "from the gut". It was easy. Easier than I had ever known running to be. No one could accuse me of going fast here, but both my feet were off the ground with each stride. I was running.

At the next light pole, I checked my heart rate monitor watch. Not even 145 BPM. I was going to keep it low, take it easy. Stay in the fat-burning range and see how far I could go, and somewhere just before Lavacourt, a wild thought came to me: I'd run all the way through Moisson, up to Freneuse, across the field to the road up to Méricourt and down to Mousseaux. I'd heard the boucle was 18 km around. I felt inspired. I was certain (enough) that I could do it

I'd do it.

Heading out of Lavacourt, I checked my heart rate again: 142 BPM. All I had to do was ask, and it dropped to 139. I altered my stride, lifting my knees, kicking my legs back a little more and ran easily into Moisson.

Are you going to do it? Myself asked me. Do you think you can go all the way around the boucle?

"Yeah, I think I am. I think I can."

Hunh. What if --

"I get tired?" I asked myself.

Yeah. I hate to bring it up, but --

"I can walk."

Or so I thought. Trying once, later, my legs wouldn't let me. The little stride on my toes had become automatic. My legs kept going. I had no choice but to tell my head to get back to work.

It was after the cemetery at the far edge of Moisson that I heard the first wild animals, off in the trees at the sides of the road. There are deer and wild boars. There are foxes and probably rabbits, although I have never seen a rabbit here, personally, although I see tons of them over near Rosny. My keys jingled in my pocket. I held them through the cloth of my jacket to make them be quiet. Animals do not carry keys, and I wanted to pass for one of them. The jingle sounded too much like tags on a dog collar, and dogs mean one thing: the hunt. Later, I took them out and stuck my finger through the ring and let them nestle in my palm so as not to grasp them and lose any precious energy. I could see the lights of La Roche-Guyon marching up the steep ridge across the Seine through the trees to my right. Then, its church began to toll the hour.

Two, three, four, myself counted. I picked up.

"Five, six, seven, eight. Eight O'clock." The bell struck again. Nine.

Nine? Nine O'Clock? Merde!, said myself. How can that be? You left just before seven, and you've run a little more than an hour.

I must have left an hour later than I thought I had. My husband would be home from work before I got back, and he'd have no idea where I was. He'd find the car keys on the ledge, the car out on the street. My bag on the stairs. The dogs crashed in front of the wood stove with the cats.

Elle n'est pas sortie ni partie promener les chiennes, he'd say to himself. Alors, où est elle? He'd never think to check to see if my running shoes were on the floor by my side of the bed.

Looks like your 18 km is over, myself said, unnecessarily.

"I know. I could cut across the boucle, you know, by the forest trail." I replied. I didn't really want to. There are --

But the wild boars --

"I know." Jinx. But, which was worse: get a lecture for worrying him by being gone without leaving any note and having forgotten my cellphone, or get a lecture for risking my life -- should my life be preserved by these huge, tusked beasts -- by returning directly home across the forest? Not that wild boars never crash across the roads around here. Ask the drivers who have had to have their cars repaired, or junk them.

Just don't tell him what you did.

"Alright," I agreed, not sure I wouldn't tell the truth, and scared as hell to head onto that 4 km long path through the home of the boars. I bounced on, as lightly as I could on my toes with the growing fatigue in the insertion point of the quads, my abductors asking me if we couldn't just hitch a ride home from the next car to pass, watching for the the lane leading to La Vacherie. The Vacherie is famous for having been Rommel's home away from home across the Seine from La Roche-Guyon, where he set up the German headquarters during the occupation. The trail through the forest starts there. The road rose gently, the sign for the sudden curves appeared, and then the lane to the right. I turned took a deep breath and steeled myself in my decision before turning left and heading into the forest, the groomed dirt road would turn rough just past the two imposing Victorian houses.

But what if you make a misstep and hurt yourself? What will you do then? Myself started in again, beginning to sound like my worry-wort husband. All this worrying wasn't helping.

"I'll be careful. My eyes will adjust. At least the stars are out and make a little light to see by. I'll take it easy, until I see the first wild boar, anyway." A weak attempt at humor. It was certain that I would. They are everywhere. In the fall, the local hunters organize weekend hunts to kill an established number of the sangliers, who would otherwise continue to reproduce, stampede across the roads, ravishing cars, right along with fields and gardens in the area.

There weren't wild boars wild here before the storm of 1999, but there was a boar farm that raised sangliers for slaughter for sausages and stews. The winds howled during the night of that great storm, and when the farmer went out to check the fences the next day, he found them blown down, and not a boar in sight. He packed up and left, but the boars stayed and became wild. Hence, the fall hunts to thin their numbers.

I left the houses in my back and felt the path deteriorate under my feet. Small animals roused into motion as I passed, scuttling off away from this creature, holding her keys to keep them from jingling and forbidding herself to speak aloud, even to encourage herself.

Don't let them think you aren't one of them. They will know you aren't if you talk, myself told me.

"Don't you think they can smell that?" I replied, barely suppressing a snideness in my voice that really wasn't very nice.

Well, it gives you a chance, if the wind is blowing away from them.

"True."

I ran on.

It seemed forever. The trees went on and on at either side. I knew how long it felt from having driven it slowly in the car with a visitor last fall, the day of a wild boar hunt, in fact. I wanted to show her the grand Victorian houses and get back home quickly. The lane, I learned that day, is murder for the suspension of a car, let alone for me in the dark; no one gets anywhere quickly on it. The hunters had stared at me like I had lost my mind. This night, brambles grabbed my running leggings, trees felled in the recent storm tripped me, the pads of my feet sometimes landed on smooth pine needles, other times slipped on a stone or in a rut. I listened for the unmistakable sounds of the wild boars.

Then, I heard them. I saw their dark forms first. There, just to my right. My heart stopped, but my feet kept moving. I thought I saw a single, glaring eye send me a warning.

Stop or keep going? Quick.

"Keep going, don't talk, no jingle -- get away."

Right. Right. We heard a loud and aggravated snort from just next to me along the path.

"Oh God."

Keep going, myself ordered me. We listened to see if it had changed directions to follow us. Memories of my husband's story about crossing a mother wild boar in the forest while out walking with his kids when they were little flew through my mind.

What did he say? Do they charge? Is it best to move or to stay still, actually. Should you stop? Hunh? Myself was starting to sound panicked. That was not helpful. I didn't need to have to get a panicked self out of there, I was already worried enough for two.

"Sh! Will you? Please? I think it's okay. I think it went on into the forest. I don't think it, or it's friends and family, wants to meet us any more than we want to meet it."

But, what if it is hungry. Do they eat us?

"No, they don't eat us. They just try to protect their young ones, but it's got to be too early for there to be babies around."

It had grown quiet around us again, and I ran on, toward the lighter sky showing in a slit from between the trees on either side of the path some unmeasurable distance ahead of us. The path kept rising, back up from the banks near Moisson to where the boucle rises to a crest above our street in Mousseaux, and then my foot came down farther than it had before. The path was heading downward. My legs were begging me to stop, but the faster I got out of there, the better. I kept the fastest past I dared to go, and could go, and still the path went on.

And on.

I was looking for the little farm and the hunting lodge, recently painted in precisely the colors of our renovated house. Of course I got there -- I wasn't running in place --, and the relief was enormous. I wasn't going to be gored by a wild boar in the silence of a late winter night, and some small distance farther along, I'd cross the Transamazonienne and continue on the paved portion of the same route, past the new elementary school, past the small community center, past the cemetery, down a steep street to our road, and, finally, to our house. The church bells were quiet when I passed, some minutes later, and it wasn't yet 10 pm when I finally stopped my heart rate monitor, saw it flash 142 BPM average and tell me I'd been at it for 1 and hour 52 minutes.

Not exactly a frantic pace, commented myself.

"That wasn't my point," I reminded myself, pushing open the gate and approaching the warm, cozy light showing through the French doors around the corner. My husband was having a whiskey, standing in his spot in front of the TV. The fire in the wood stove had turned to embers. I tried the handle. Locked. I tapped softly on the pane of glass. He turned and smiled at me, shook his finger "no", teasing me. I nodded "yes". The door opened.

"Où étais-tu?" he asked.

I told him the truth, and went to measure my distance in the car, slipping ColdPlay into the CD player to keep me company.

What if a wild boar charges the car in the forest? Myself started in again.

"It won't. I'll drive slowly. They only run into cars, you know, when cars are going too fast to avoid them. They're pretty stupid."

Oh. Alright then. We drove off the way I had set out, two hours before. It was 15.1 km, with 4 of them being the trail through the forest. I have never run that far before.

It worked, the "barefoot running" method carried me farther than I had ever run before, and I could walk this morning, ride a stationary bike at the gym for an hour, stretch and still move. My personal trainer is a Doubting Thomas, telling me to wait until I injured something or another. He likes to think he knows it all.

I let him.
....