House afire!

The trim and wainscoting burn

Well, not really. Just parts of the house. Having gained two more days before guests arrive for the week, owing to the SNCF union Rail Sud, which has been striking since Tuesday and wreaking havoc on travel to points south from Paris, and which strike prevented us from taking our TGV to Toulon yesterday for a wedding this weekend (after we got to the station and spent an afternoon waiting, story at 11), I made trips to the dump to clear out all the stuff I tore out of the petit salon.

My husband said it looked like a dump. He wasn't wrong.

Meanwhile, he continued framing out the room for the sheetrock (and we're doing the ceiling now, too. Or at least I think I want to), while the fish mated (story at 11).

Big day around here.

I like burning things. It's kind of the radical approach, but it is like purifying. The only thing was that I got a little teary-eyed, and not from the smoke, when the flames started to lick the posts of the big section of the original small balcony.

When you burn, you can't go back. It's gone. Another part of the house that someone spent time making is irretrievable, along with the wood from some tree we never saw. Well, as they say in French, "Out with the old, in with the new."

Just kidding. It's like they say in English, "C'est la vie."
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