Revisiting May in the garden

Kathryn Morley rose,
The "petit salon" is just beyond the door

If you have a few moments, get a cup of tea, click on the slide show below, go to Picasa and watch in full screen.

I hope the flowers and the sunlight do for you what they do for me.

For a plan of the garden, see "The garden" from the earliest days of this blog, but not this garden.


....

We're not in Connecticut anymore, Shadow

Little window,
Big headache

Why does everything seem so simple -- ingeniously, deceptively simple -- until you sit down to actually figure it out?

I have spent the morning avoiding my latest solution in waiting (a problem, in other words), wandering around the garden, lost in contemplation of Nature's unceasing wonder and beauty, which I have been sufficiently intelligent to invite into my environs by planting English roses, clematis, and caring for what was already there, the peonies, the wisteria, the tea roses and the irises, and various other things that delight, however, I am now forced to sit down and figure it out.

It is the source of my husband's abundant frustration and ill humor these last days, surpassed only by the abundance of blooms in the garden.

Thank God for small favors.

It refers to the method of attaching the wood jambs for the windows and doors, and their associated trim, in the petit salon. It has been hell. We have tried cutting angles. The guy at Point P said, "Tout le monde utilise de la colle pour fixer le bois au métal." Everyone uses glue to attach the wood trim to metal angles? Sans blague?

"Vraiment?" He nodded. He was flirting with me. I knew it. He knew I knew. Even my stepdaughter had to know.

"Vraiment." I wasn't so sure, and even if I accepted that this is true, some things just feel unacceptable. But, I have come here to live. Sisyphe is not in Connecticut anymore. Maybe, I thought, it is time to accept a change of methods. I bought the glue and the metal shears to cut up the lightweight framing into the angles we needed. We'd attach them to the walls and the metal framing, and then -- uh -- glue the jambs to them.

It was only later that I had suffered my nervous breakdown, sitting on the floor of Leroy Merlin, sketching how we do things back home in Connecticut, and everywhere else in the US, Canada and the UK, while my husband took in the significance of this to me and several bemused shoppers looked on. I was preparing to abandon the metal angles I had cut, ripping the ones we had already installed out of the wall, and toss the idea neither of us liked of gluing anything to them.

I leaned back against a column, covered with the little plastic bags you can fill with your selection of screws, nails, or molly bolts, and stared at my husband, my sketch on the back of a receipt between us. It showed wood studs, beautiful wood studs, spaced 16" on center, coming up to a door. The studs doubled at the door to provide structural soundness and a lovely nailing surface for the jambs.

"Je vois," said my husband. He saw. He reflected, or pretended to, while I stared forlornly at my sketch. "Mais, comment fixera-t-on le bois au mur?"

I could feel someone trying to get at the little plastic bags just above my head.

"Excusez-moi," I turned and saw a man grinning at me. "Je suis en train de faire une crise nerveuse."

"Mais il n'y a pas de problème," he said. I looked back at my husband. A hint of a smile lingered around the corners of his lips, thinner and paler than usual from the stress of this solution-waiting-to-happen.

"Comme tu as fixé les lambourds à la dalle. Avec des chevilles à frapper." He nodded and we began filling the largest sized plastic zipper lock sac with nylon anchors.

It felt cooperative for the first time in days. Warm and almost fuzzy.

We returned home with our supply of nylon anchors, and he set to work, constructing a framework to receive the door jambs, while I deliberately did other things, like prune the gazebo terrace. I advanced to opening the pool for the season when he got to the window on Monday, a holiday here, and the swearing could be heard from the second terrace.

It didn't help that he had had fewer than 3 hours sleep on duty the night before.

Tuesday, he redid Monday's work.

Wednesday, under extreme psychological and emotional pressure, I sat down to make some millwork detail drawings and get enough down on paper to take to the wood shop to work out a solution. He hit terribly close to the mark the previous evening when he said, "Tu ne me montres pas ce qu'on fait et je ne peux rien comprendre."

The trouble was, I didn't believe he'd pay attention to what I drew.

"La prochaine fois, tu me laisseras tout décider car c'est moi qui le fais." Les mots qui tuent... Next time, you let me decide how we are going to do things because I am the one who has to do it.

But it isn't just the words, it's the look that goes along with them. And the tone. It is -- accusatory. Even worse, it was somewhat justified; whether I think he is going to pay attention or not, I owe him a workable method of proceeding.

At 5:35 pm, I pulled up at the wood shop. At 6:05 pm, I drove away with a solution, essentially the same one we had discussed the first time that involves building the "box" of the jambs, sill and top of the window trim and fixing it to the wall with -- metal angles. By the time I got home, those metal angles had morphed into a wood structure around the finished "box" that would take into account the lightweight framing members anchored to the wall and prevent his having to tear down his work.

At 7:40 pm, he walked in the door, kissed me hello and said, "J'ai eu une réunion informatique ce soir. J'aurais voulu aller chez Leroy Merlin trouver une solution pour le --" I interrupted him.

"Non, je suis allée voir monsieur au Comptoir des Bois. C'est bon. On a une solution. C'est la même chose que nous avons discuté la première fois, et c'est essentiellement ton idée de faire le "cadre" et le fixer au mur, sauf que au lieu de faire un cadre structurel et clouer le bois de finition là-dessus, on va fixer le cadre fini en place avec soit des équerres soit une structure en bois anchré au mur. Vide ton esprit. Ne te préoccupe pas. On aura ce qu'il faut vendredi soir." Just in time for the weekend's work.

"Je ne sais pas si je comprends, mais --"

"Si, tu comprends parce que c'est à la base ton idée, mais tu ne vois pas. C'est ton idée de faire la boite en bois, mais n'y pense plus. Tu verras." He seemed happy not to have to understand and went an settled himself on the sofa in front of Roland Garros, where Gaël Monfils was playing a playground level match against the number 92 ranked player Fabio Fognini.

Essentially, I will make a detailed drawing of the window frame and the lightweight framing in place, draw the finish wood desired to trim out the window and then add a system in wood with cut-outs around the metal framing that we can attach to the finished trim "box" and bolt to the wall. To address my concern that it will sound hollow -- why I had broken down in the screw, nail and nylon anchor aisle at Leroy Merlin in the first place --, they will make it out of 20 or 22 mm wood. Nice and sturdy.

You can tap all you like, and it should sound solid.

He wants me to use medium because it is cheap and you can't tell it from pine, beech or anything else once it is painted, but that's another hurdle for me to jump.
....

The huntress and the hunted

Savannah

Instinct. Genetic memory. Wisp has found her own private savannah, contested only by the only other feline in residence, Shadow, although the dogs think it makes a great hiding place for for the cats for Hide and Seek, rather subverting the purpose of a savannah, if you ask the cats.

I was looking for an excuse not to do something, drawn for the millionth time to the French doors to watch the sunshine in the garden, the frogs sunbathing on the edge of the basin, the fish milling around the lily pads and Japanese Horsetail, the peonies bursting into flower as the wisteria fades into fuller leaf and the rose bushes prepare their appearance next on stage. The dogs lazed about, and then -- movement and chaos in a split second.

The body of Wisp appeared above the ledge of the basin on the far side, twisting like a skateboarder high above the lip of a bowl, her paws came together around a small dark object that had darted over the garden and swooped too close to her hiding place, screened in the Angel Hair grass in the warm sun. She fell back as the dogs raced me to her, shouting her name.

She was lying in a crouch, the small dark object motionless between her paws. I grabbed her haunches, surprising her enough to make her let go. The bird flew away instantly, up through the grass, alongside the linden tree and away over the neighbor's garden.

She didn't even look at me.

"Bad cat. Bad, bad, bad cat."

The dogs looked at us and headed off to lie back down in the patches of clover rapidly filling in for the missing lawn. I considered anew the fate of the baby bird I thought had maybe fallen out of the linden tree, the one I found surrounded by Wisp and the two dogs the other day, and who died a short while later in my hand.

And who I forgot is still in one of the bird nests of our collection from the garden, sitting on the wainscoting in the living room.

I had a new appreciation for Wisp's previously unseen hunting skills and a far better idea how she had survived at all those months she was alone in the sand quarry and the forest in the middle of the boucle de la Seine. She is, after all, a lithe and skilled huntress of birds.

Great.

Chouette. Just chouette. Do I have to keep her inside, or an eye on her all the time until all the baby birds have had a fair chance to learn to fly and beware?

This evening, I stuck my other pink running hat on my head and headed out the gate, seriously considering going really easy on myself.

"Baby," I told myself.

What? C'mon, I already ran again yesterday, and it was almost as hot out there in the sun all covered up from head to toe, and I did it, and today we could barely walk. It was true. We'd had to go down the stairs placing both feet on each step, crabwise, to get to the bottom. Can't we do the shorter run?

Myself definitely should have kept the question to herself. I turned right at the top of the hill and headed to the Transamazonienne, thinking how very slow I am; how very much I really had lost since Easter. At least it was evening, and cooler, a breeze skimming my cheek, and I had on shorts, and not leggings. I turned onto the Transamazonienne and headed up the gentle rise back to the top of the ridge, and there on the bike lane in front of me was a small body. I stopped in front of it. A bird, exactly like the one that had died in my hand the other day, only bigger. A parent.

It was warm in the palm of my hand, its eyes black and shiny still, but its head rolled faster than its body, and my heart beating fast still from the rise, I only felt one heartbeat: my own. We stood there for a moment, and I took it over and laid its warm body by the fence, in the shade, where no car or bicycle could do it further harm, where nothing could do it any more injury. I laid it down and stepped back to the bike lane as a car sped on up the rise, traveling the same way I headed back out again.

"Be careful," I wanted to tell everyone barreling up and down the Transamazonienne, racing to make it to the supermarket before it closed or home from work, heedless of the small animals that have no choice. "Faites attention."

I forgot to think about how much better about myself this run would make me feel about myself. I ran on, the fields opening on my left, the forest on my right. I forgot to think about how much better my jeans will fit and the compliments in which I soak when I hold my feet to the fire and run. I ran on, the forest returning on my left, the traffic circle approaching below. 3 kilometers past; 4.5 to go. I forgot to think about the blog entry I write in my head as I go, rather than listening to music. I ran on, repeating "light and easy, light and easy" with my breathing, laboring. I thought about the bird. I slowed, and I walked, the fields now on both sides again, the evening sun low over the grasses waving in the breeze, lighting their feathery tips.

A car approached, driving lazily, unlike the others, the Audis and the four wheel drives, who rushed past in a blur and a burst of modernity, puissance. An old white Peugeot, timeless, made merely to move. There were two people in it. I imagined them relaxed, content. I saw the tufts of grass at the edge of the road alongside my feet, and I thought, It could be so long ago. It could be anytime. Except my New Balance sneakers, of course.

They kind of wreck it.

I thought, I could be gone tomorrow (I must have been thinking of the bird), and it would be alright for this evening.

I looked up at the wind turbines just past the crest of the ridge up on the other side of the Seine, the rolling hills covered in fields and patches of forest, the lines of houses showing where the villages went and finally ended above the road over there along the Seine.

We have wind turbines here.

I arrived at the posts of the road across the field, alongside the little orchard, back to the road home, and began to run again. I felt terrible. Terribly thirsty, and tired. I wanted to stop.

"No. You won't."

No?

"No. This is about the mind. This is about choices, and I am the one deciding. Go. At least to the bend, like yesterday, and then we'll see."

Silence.

I made it home in 5 minutes less than yesterday's and the day before's time. A full 5 minutes off 4.66 miles.

"Thank you," I told myself.

But, there was only panting, and a faint urge to be sick on the sidewalk, but I have my appearance to keep.
....

Not Jell-O yet

Making the angles

Shortly before 3 pm, I walked out the living room French door to see the sun in the flowers and leaves and watch the fish chase each other (they are mating again), my hand aching from cutting the metal framing studs (isn't it interesting how many words in construction make reference to male virility? Studs, members... yuck) into angles to which to attach the blocking to which to face nail the window and door casings. It was right at that very instant that I was seized by the desire to go for a run. My first since I hurt my back at Easter.

Don't look at a calendar.

My brain had finally accepted the message to get up and move. I turned around, headed upstairs, changed into my running gear, covering as much skin as I possibly could, grabbed one of my pink running caps, slathered 50 SP anti UVB cream on any skin not covered, plucked my husband's Oakleys up off the ledge by the door along with my house keys and headed out into the brilliant sunshine.

Heading up the street toward the hill that leads, eventually, to the Transamazonienne, I considered my route. Should I turn left at the top of the hill and take the short version or turn right and attack the same one I did on my last run? I turned right. I could always walk, and there's no sense not finding out just exactly how I measure up against myself after a 6-week period of a sloth-like state that left me taking more of me out for a run than the last time. Until inspiration hit, after days of deliberation, I felt too heavy to even contemplate movement.

I knew it was in my mind, but the mind is a powerful force and gets its way too often.

I hit the Transamazonienne and turned left up the gentle rise, staying on the side with patches of shade. I ran on. It was easy. What was this? Did it not matter that I had done nothing for weeks?

Could it be?

I ran past the path out of the boar forest on my right and the street back home (a safety exit) on my left, and noted the lack of shade for the next 200 meters. The heat picked up. I glanced at my watch when I thought I had to have hit the half-way point, my house down there to my left, somewhere. 20 minutes. Not quite halfway. I still felt great, and I was at the easy slope down to the traffic circle, and there was shade.

It was halfway down the slope that I began to feel my feet ache. Not my butt. Not my legs. No, my insteps.

"Lift your feet," I instructed myself. "More bounce. C'mon."

Myself sighed and raised my knees higher.

"Keep going. You're more than halfway there."

Leaving the traffic circle, I ran into unsheltered pavement. Fields stretched to the left and to the right under a wide blue sky. The sun beat down, and it wasn't even summer hot. I pulled my sleeves down to my hands, lowered my head and let my visor frame the view of the pavement just in front of my feet. I heard a little voice.

Can I walk? Please? Myself asked, rather plaintively.

I thought about it. I could say no and pay for it tomorrow with an absolute refusal to go out again, or I could remain flexible, open-minded, show an ability to take changing circumstances into consideration (like being out of shape, after all, and having chosen to run in the hottest moment of the afternoon). I made up my mind.

"Alright. But just to the intersection up there, where the road cuts up past the orchard to the road through the field."

Myself nodded happily and showed her appreciation by keeping up a nice pace. Those passing me in their cars could admire my fast-walking form. We arrived at the posts marking the road to the left.

"Okay. Go."

Okay. Up came my knees, and I was off at an easy pace again, up the faux plat to the road home.

Um.

"Now what?"

Um, I'm a little -- sore?

"Are you asking to walk again?" Myself nodded. I sighed. "Alright, but just to the next village sign, you hear me? Then you are finishing up all the way home. No excuses." Myself nodded, eager to please. The sign approached faster than either of us wanted.

"Ready to go?"

Yeah.

"C'mon, a little enthusiasm now." We set off again. I heard a yelp and noticed my abs were hanging out there in front, like the head of a deer tied to the roof of the car, bouncing around.

"Hey! You're supposed to be driving!"

Sorry. They didn't sound very sorry.

"And you, butt, you're supposed to be helping, too. What are you doing there in the backseat?"

Sorry! it squealed and scrambled over the seat to join my abs at the wheel. We were almost at the road down to home. Downhill a whole kilometer. Shade. Fastoche!

But wait. What was that? This was harder? I made it to the sign into the village. Only another kilometer to go, and then --

Ouch!

I felt the pebble pressing into the side of the base of my big toe. Just ahead, there was a planter. I could sit on the edge and empty my shoe.

"Coward."

No, really, it hurts!

"Coward." I sat, untied my shoe, pulled it off and turned it upside down. Nothing. "See?"

Really. I felt it. You know I did. I did. I shook harder. Still nothing. My shoes, a bone spur. Whatever. I pulled it back on and set off again, thinking, This is for dignity and honor.

By the time I arrived at the gate, I had a much clearer sense of what those two words mean, and we'll see about tomorrow.
....

We have electrical cable

The gaines électriques

What is wrong with me that I cannot for the life of me think of the word for "gaine" in English? I mean, how many times have I talked in meetings about them, and supplying the "rings and strings" to pull the cable through them later, and I can't think of it now? Don't bother using Reverso.com. It will only give you "girdle".

I know. I've tried it before. Maybe they call them "girdles" up in the British Isles, but that's not what we Anglo-Americans call them. I can stick with what we French call them, néanmoins.

So, the question of the light switches and outlets came up this morning. I got the major brands over here, and they are three: Legrand, Arnould and Alombard, which is Schneider Electric. Then, he mentioned the "artisan" brand, Meljac. I had heard of Meljac. I have passed by their showroom in Paris.

"Mais, ça, ça c'est vraiment comme d'installer des prises et des interrupteurs en or," he warned me, adding quickly, "mais, c'est votre argent. Ca vous regarde comment vous voulez le dépenser." I heard him; he'd think I was nuts to spend my money on these wallplates artisanaux.

Almost as soon as he had left, I raced to Google them and have a look. He knew I'd do that. I wasn't very transparent. He might think I am nuts, but I -- wouldn't! The Meljac products are beautiful. They are -- what I want. They are, probably, really, really expensive, since Arnould's copy-cat series Mémoire is already a minimum of just under 100 euros a wall plate, which is what he thought the Meljac ones cost.
Ouf.

Ouf. Ouf -- ouf. I emailed their representative for prices, ordering and availability. Always good to be -- prepared.

Then I looked over the Mémoire series. To really see the full line, you need to use the link for artdarnaould.com and make an account. I'm interested, bien sur, in the water drop switches, but the Meljac ones are simpler, and simpler wins my heart and soul every time. This might be the only thing to get me to reduce the number of outlets, if it comes down to it.

Mais non! Jamais! I want them everywhere.

You see, these things really count for me. I have always adhered enthusiastically to the architectural maxim Spend on the things you touch -- counter tops, light switches, woodwork and trim, bath fixtures and fittings, etc. This is what people see, this is what they touch in your home or place of business. It gets noticed, and how do you renovate an old house and put in basic Legrand light switches and outlets? Hm?

It's the kind of thing that really bothers me. I hate walking into a traditional, carefully crafted home and seeing Home Depot light switches and outlets. I mean, why? But I know what's behind it. It sounds like this, "Mais c'est pas possible! Tu veux payer ça pour un interrupteur quand l'autre marche aussi bien? N'importe quoi."

I mean, how do you even reply, except to throw a fit?
....

Lessons in resilience

Chive flowers open

This was going to be a post about pretty flowers. Just pretty flowers. No drama. Of any kind. Marital, building or natural.

100% pure prettiness.

I wasn't even counting on taking any pictures today. Just post everything upon which my eyes have feasted that hasn't received due attention, but the rhododendron by the gazebo caught my eye; it was blooming. I had seen that the first buds had started to open under an enormous and enormously prolific (this year) 'Pierre de Ronsard' rose against the south-facing wall. So, instead of continue directly down the center stair direct to the wood pile, I took a jag to the left and went to see.

There are no pictures of this. I respect your right to imagine beauty, and I haven't touched this part of the garden in months. It shows.

Making my way past clematis, in which I nearly got my feet all caught up, and a 'Ghislaine de Féligonde' climber that have gone crazy this year (What's this about? Established at last after one full season in place since I planted them May 5 two years ago? Favorable weather? A little of both?), I took the secret stairs down to the lower garden, picked my way through the fresh piles of dog pooh in the weed-ridden and strangled grass, peeked in a skimmer and noted a bloated, small mole that will need to be removed and then went to take in the devastation the presence of direct sunshine and the absence of an automatic sprinkler system wreaked on the hydrangeas. I had already gone to see them a few weeks back.

It was bad. I didn't even know why I was going to look at them, except to remind myself of what neglect will do.

And then... in the very worst of cases, even the ones in the nursery pots my husband had nagged me to plant, and which I had spurned, there were leaves! Down at the base of the plants, brave new leaves had appeared. Life had done it again, gone and given proof of its resilience, its desire to continue.

Instead of pretty, we get to think about Beauty, the Beauty of Nature and Life. I get a second chance.

I went and got my camera.

"Divine!!" I said to my husband, seated at the end of the table in front of his laptop, trying to stay alert after a night on duty, Guess!! He looked up.

"Les hydrangeas qui sont mortes? En bas du jardin, près de la piscine? Elles ne sont pas toutes mortes!"

He raised his eyes from the keyboard to look at me over the tops of his magnifying glasses, the ones he uses to read and see the screen, the ones that when he doesn't use them let him think that I am pretty.

"Il y a des feuilles qui poussent des bases des plantes. Je vais pouvoir en récupérer pas mal, mais pas toutes." I stopped my announcement to draw breath before continuing, reluctantly, "Il y en a qui sont allées trop loin," I admitted, making it sound for all the world like I wasn't really at fault.

I went on to explain that I might remove those that hadn't been done in once and for all and plant them in safer, more protected areas, since the sun has proven itself too much down there. I tried very hard to sound very wise and recalcitrant, like this could happen to anyone. Any gardener, when it absolutely could not, would not.

"Ils allaient très bien dans la cour," he remarked.

It was true. The hydrangeas had done surprisingly well in the entry "courette", despite the abysmal soil for these acid soil-loving plants. I could try put one or more back up near there, enriching their soil, and distribute the others in the shadier areas of the garden, along the sides.



I have my work cut out for me. I have to get out of the house and away from my computer and get to work on the areas of the garden that I shove from my mind, which I can do because I don't have to look at them from where I sit, or bust up a slab, or install oak flooring, or sit, catatonic, and contemplate how small I -- and our means -- am before everything I have to do.
....

The noisiness of light construction

Up

It was on Twitter, which posted it to Facebook, "Haven't told my husband (yet) that we are probably going to double up the sheetrock. Oh yeah."

"If we were married, I would understand something like that," came the reply. It was another architect.

The cardinal rule I ignored: Architects should always marry other architects, or people with teeny tiny egos, or who have no need to prove anything around the house.

That one did. So did the architect-friend with whom I discussed the noisiness of light construction. Architects understand how important this is, and they can both do double layers of sheetrock whenever they feel like it. Without a challenge. Without an unpleasant comment. Without quailing.

I am so jealous.

We had just screwed the first panel I had measured and cut into place and I just had to -- tap on it. My tap reverberated in the empty space between the back of the only 13mm (1/2") sheetrock that is pretty standard around here. Just so you know, when we intend to use only one layer, it's 3/4" sheetrock. I knocked, and the reverberations increased, and I heard a definite squeaking noise, the sound of the bizarre fittings that hold the vertical metal (can I really call them?) studs onto the horizontal elements that are anchored into the walls.

Squeak, squeak.

It sounded like Barbie and Ken's little bed.

"J'aime pas ça," I said to my husband, whose mouth was filled with sheetrock screws. He removed one and glanced down at me, where I was still tapping the wall. He removed the others, so as to be able to speak.

"Personne -- à part toi -- ne va jamais tapper contre le mur." He sounded pretty sure of himself, returned the screws to his front jeans pocket, and started to position one. He hadn't grasped the issue; I didn't care if anyone else would, ever. I would. Frequently.

I watched him position the drill and screw it in.

"Je vais le faire." He looked back down at me. "Je vais peut-être essayer de mettre de l'insulation là derrière."

"Ca ne servira à rien." He was saying that stuffing fiberglass insulation behind the sheetrock we had just installed would be useless.

"Ca donnera un son plus," I thought a bit, "solide. Comme si le mur l'était vraiment." I cannot stand anything that doesn't sound solid, especially in an old house. I have to tear it apart and start again.

"C'est comme tu veux."

It was only after we had struggled like pack mules to hold the sheet under the carriage of the stair into place that I realized I had missed my opportunity. It was closed. For another 71 years, although he was so disappointed with a gap between the sheetrock panels that I suggested we take it down and do it again.

I had also realized that it would have been better to butt that one into the back of the vertical panels rather than slide it past them, as we had done, but that was a lot easier. Doubling the sheetrock would solve that, too, because we could do that on the second go around, but I still haven't found the courage to bring it up.

"Use a technical word," suggested my second architect friend. "That always works for me. Stops the argument dead."

"You clearly don't know my husband well enough yet," I sighed. "If anyone else uses a technical term, they are an 'expert'. If I do, it's irrelevant, and then I have to have a fit. Can you call him?"

That was wishful thinking. They don't speak the same language.

Neither do we, come to think of it.



Maybe we'll look at flowers in the sun I haven't seen in days tomorrow.
....

Thunderheads

Frog eyes, they're watching you
seeing your every move

Hell has no fury like an architect scorn'd.

The rain never came, but the storm did. The thunderheads burst at the dinner table, late. It was over headless nails.

"Ils sont moches," stated my husband. They are ugly. It was exasperating. I was exasperated.

"On ne les voit même pas!" I shouted. I believe I said it tolerably civil like the first time. It was only the last ten or an hundred or so times that I lost all semblance of self-control. "On fait comme ça tout le temps! Tu les fonces dans la surface du bois, tu mets un tout petit bout de pâte à bois, et la peinture couvre tout! Même si tu laisses le bois clair, ça ne se voit pas!"

This was about when and how to attach the wood trim and who would win. Our marriage is about power and control at its dark heart. That's what you get when your husband is the eldest of a large pack of kids, and mother maintained control through absolute authority. You didn't pinch your brother and feed the peas to the dog? No matter, you're getting the rings on the backhand across the cheek to transmit on down the long table of siblings until it reaches the guilty party. The Sun King had nothing on her, and every woman becomes the "mother", a force to be subdued lest you lose your own. Forget that this time, you chose her. At least our marriage has another heart, struggling in that never-ending combat of good and evil, light and dark.

"J'aurais aimé que tu me laisses la décision de comment organiser le travail puisque c'est moi qui le fais."

"Pas si tu veux le faire n'importe comment. On met toujours le BA13 avant les boiseries. C'est les boiseries qui font la finition et passent par dessus. Si non, comment veux-tu passer le BA13 derrière?"

I knew he didn't really want to slide the sheetrock, otherwise called "Placo", short for "Placoplâtre", ou "BA13", behind the wood trim. He'd already told me how we didn't need to redo the old wood trim in the living room because it was perfectly fine to glue the Placo to the existing finished walls and leave the old trim, even where the new wall surface would stand out past the wood trim. I never forgave him for thinking that, and to be perfectly honest, it is at the heart of my anxiety and funk since we started the inside of the house: I know what is alright with him, and I know what is alright with me, and I know they are far, far apart.

It might have been salvageable last night had he stopped there, but no, he took it farther.

"Tu aurais pu me montrer les dessins pour que je voie comment c'est fait." I gasped. I had shown him the drawings. "Maintenant je sais pourquoi les ouvriers ont eu ras le bol." That did it. I lost it.

"Je te les ai montré, mais tu ne te souviens jamais de rien de ce que tu vois!"

Yes, I really did put the exclamation point in there when I said that, breaking all my rules concerning remaining calm to carry the point. Besides, there had already been all those other exclamation points since the beginning of the fight. "Tu dis que c'est beau, mais tu ne sais pas les lire pour voir comment cela doit être fait." I put my head back in my hands and pressed them to my scalp. The better to not throw my glass of wine across the table.

"Mais bien sur!" he returned the shot, "mais tu ne me montres pas où on va! Si c'est moi qui fais le travail, c'est moi qui décide comment on fait le travail!" So there!

No, it doesn't work that way. You see, there are ways to do things that we all learn and that we all learn to respect. We don't do whatever we can figure out on our own and call it good enough.
But, it didn't stop there, either.

"Tu es architecte --" he began, but I didn't let him add another word. I knew where that was going, tu as passé ton temps à faire des dessins de ce que tu voulais, mais tu ne savais rien faire toi-même.

I'd have forgiven him this raw assumption had I not told him a million times that I had spent the majority of my working years in the field because not only do architects in the States make pretty drawings of their reveries, they also oversee the execution of the work in the field, and I did an extra dose of that because I was perpetually assigned to fix the jobs that had gone wrong. My job was to satisfy the frustrated contractor and the nervous and angry client. Get it done, and get it done right. I also had the benefit of the best contractors, subs and woodworkers in all of Southwestern Connecticut for the highest-end work.

This I cannot forgive my husband for not allowing me.

I pressed my palms into the table and half stood, staring him in the eyes. I was in the zone out past rage. I was scarcely articulate. I sucked in air and struggled for enough calm to come close to syaing what I felt.

"Tu sais très bien que ce n'est pas le cas, et si tu ne le sais pas, c'est parce que tu n'écoutes pas ce que je te dis, tu ne le donnes aucune importance, et tu refuses d'accepter qu'oui, je sais faire, et quand les méthodes de travail et les matériaux changent, comme entre les States et ici, je me renseigne auprès des professionnels, et j'accepte leur savoir faire. Je ne fais pas n'importe quoi que me vient à l'esprit."

I also do not tell you how to do your job. I do not belittle the experience you have gained over the course of your professional life. I cannot take away the theater of your practice because it is outside the realm of the shared home. I cannot pretend I know how to do it because no one pretends there is DIY medicine, or at least not surgery. The Internet is full of DYI medicine, which is about as good as your average DIY home fixer-upper. There is no Home Depot or IKEA, stocked with everything you need to save the cost of visiting the doctor.

My profession isn't one. That's what this is about.

We have friends. Really. Can you believe it? Despite how we behave. He is an architect and she is not. They bought an apartment, a beautiful apartment in Paris, and they commenced to do work on it. As they described that work over dinner one evening, seated around their lovely dining table, the atmosphere thickened when they got to the storage system in clear wood he had designed and had custom built for a long, narrow space just beyond the wall of French doors that separate it from the living room. It took up the entire length of the rear wall, and it projected rather egoistically into the remaining space. The strip of room that remained appeared engulfed. She had a perfectly valid point. The cabinetry wasn't particularly suited to the circumstances, but he had carried the day, and she lives with it.

I understand that it doesn't always go well. I do. But, I show my husband the ideas I have. I do show him the drawings as they develop, and I hear him tell me and other people that it will be beautiful. I feel reassured. But, to make it really work, it absolutely has to be done properly. There is no negotiating on that.

And he has failed to understand what it meant to me to leave the practice of my profession and settle into the countryside, taking care of the raggedy family, the garden, the few things I could claim for myself without having to fight like a dog for a bone. To be credited with experience and knowledge for which I was actually once paid and for which I was even praised, for which we once won an award.

When I think of all the years of feeling like I knew nothing and had so much to learn, and the raw fear of having to pull it together or sink, it is the most painful to have that called into question by my husband. He has never seen my work. Never seen me at work. I have seen him at work. I know what he does, and I know what it is worth. My work was only a vague concept.

My home is not only our home, it is my opportunity to do something for us that others will see. To do it right so that it will show well and so that I can be proud is the least of what I ask. It is a way of reclaiming part of myself, of feeling competent and whole again. All I really ask is support for that, and we fight about back-nailing or headless nails and who gets to decide.

"C'est beaucoup mieux quand tu mets les boiseries avant et tu les fixes de derrière, et puis tu poses le Placo."

"Pourquoi si le tout petit trou est parfaitement invisible? Jamais je n'ai fais un projet -- jamais, et là on parle des projets qui vallaient dans les millions de dollars et furènt de la plus haute gamme -- l'où on posait les boiseries -- ce qui sont des finitions -- avant le Placo. Jamais. Même si'on laisse le bois clair, les clous de face font de tout petits trous qu'on ne voit pas de tout, mais nous allons peindre le bois!" And on and on.

Why did I have to fight something so basic as putting up the sheetrock before the window trim?

Why?

But the best thing about having done the summer room? I have a choice of where I wish to sleep when I quit the marital bed.

He brought me coffee, dates and dried apricots this morning.

"Je voudrais ton avis," he said when I had come back into the house, carrying my tray. I'd like your opinion.

"Es-tu sûr? Je suis très bien là," I said.

"Je sais," he said, "mais je ne suis pas bien là," he glanced up towards the ceiling, "seul."

We're back at work. For now. Or he is. I have to get back to the drawings so he can see exactly how it is done and organize his work.


....

Back to the metal framing on Grande Rue

The rain comes

Scritch, scritch, scritch.

That and far worse sounds were coming from the garden below my window, where I had gone to hide in my bed from the other storm brewing; the one I had set in motion this morning, bringing up the installation of the metal framing system for the sheetrock in the "petit salon", when he mentioned getting to the electrical work this weekend.

It was time.

It had to be done.

It was probably why I woke up catatonic. He thought he had finished. I did not.

"En fait, l'électricien vient mardi." I have forgotten to mention that here. I called yesterday, and he picked up.

"Bonjour, Madame Sisyphe."

"Mais! Comment le savez-vous que c'est moi?"

"Je reconnais votre numéro maintenant," he said, not adding, "after all these calls."

It appears that he came a couple weeks back and waited for me, that I was to have called to confirmed that I would be here and not at the airport. That was the week of the canceled flights, after the volcano blew in Iceland.

"C'est vrai?" I asked.

"Je vous ai attendu. Vous ne vous souvenez de rien?"

No, allowed; I didn't remember a thing of such an exchange, that I had said I would call to let him know if I would be at the airport or not. Funny, though, because I was not at the airport the morning he was waiting outside the gate. I am, however, reassured that it is not my support of President Obama that he does not want to come again. If it wasn't our discussion about race and immigration keeping him from coming, but my having stood him up, then there is still hope for the people of the world.

"Alors, je viendrai mardi. C'est sur? Vous serez là mardi matin?" Oui, Monsieur.

"Bon, alors," said mon mari, "tu ne veux pas que je fasse l'électricité dans le petit salon." It was sort of a question. The kind that is a restatement for clarity.

"Non. Il va la faire, mais cela nous laisse le temps de revenir à la préparation de l'installation du BA13." BA13 is 13 mm sheetrock. I waited for it to come.

"Mais, c'est fini," he said. I had to say it.

"Non, pas vraiment." And we were off. I said what I had to say, he blew, we argued, I exited, and from my room, I listened from the shallow depths of a light depression-induced doze.

Scritch, scritch, "Putain truc! Merde alors... fait chier -- argggghh", scritch, scritch -- stomp, stomp, stomp. Creak, creak, creak (he was climbing the ladder, bit of metal in hand; I could see it in my mind's dim eye). Bang, bang, bang-bang-bang, "Mais! Merde alors, allez! Al-lez, pu-tain!"

I rolled over and tried to remain unresponsive, still, absent while time continued its progression. I would eventually have to come down.

I did. He spoke to me civilly.

"J'ai fait un pet (you pronounce the "t", for those who want to know) dans le parquet." It is the same word as "fart".

I didn't ask to see the dent he had made in the floor. He had placed sheets of thin plywood from the old storage system he never finished under the legs of the ladder. I was going to cover the floor in kraft paper, or at least a sheet would have been a good idea. Every time he climbed up and down and brought the hammer down, twisted on that ladder in frustration with a bit of metal, he ground the plaster dust he was causing to shower down under his hammer blows right into the new floor.

I shrugged. I thought of Sam the other day and said, "Ca va lui donner encore plus d'authenticité." I'd have even preferred that it not be set so tightly, but that we had left larger joints between the strips of oak. My husband wanted perfection.

I walked back out of the room.

He says it's never serious when he swears and pronounces oaths against inanimate objects (or people); it's a "soupape", a valve. A safety valve. We have talked about this before, somewhere here. Ah, here it is. Funny, it's the same activity. Not funny. That's why I knew I'd take to my bed while I was still in it this morning.

I hear him sighing. Loudly. And then, "Ah la-la la-la la-la, mais qu'est-ce qu'il me fait chier celui-là!"

I started to see the room, and the rest of the house, never done. Never, ever, ever done. The misery stretching out into the finite infinity of our lives before us, a reminder of his ill humor and the fact that we can't just hire people to do things for us.

"You, sir, install that metal framing!"

"You, sir, hang, that sheetrock!"

"You, sir, I'd like three more units like the last wall system you built to specification."

"And, you, sir, clean up that paint dribble."

No. It's our work. All of it, and it isn't any fun at all because some parts of it just aren't his thing, and if he doesn't want to buy that terrific tool for cutting through metal framing like butter, then I am not going to make it mine.

No, sir.

We all makes our beds and lie in them, don't we?

Rapide knows what I'm talking about, don't you, Rapide?
....

When mistakes are not lovely

Nap time in the Peaceable Kingdom

(That isn't always so peaceable. Ask the dogs about the cats.)

Yesterday afternoon, I was kneeling on the just fine grain sanded stained oak floor applying floor wax and carefully massaging it into the heart of the wood (I love that expression), when I heard the Fiat pull into the space between the old school (now three apartments, recently completed for rental) and Christian's house, just across from the window.

"Hi, Mom," he said from the sidewalk just outside the open window. I jumped, even though I knew he would look in and speak to me. I was waiting for him, even. Still, somehow I had managed to forget in the space of a massage stroke.

"Hi, Sam!" I said, as though I were completely surprised to see him, despite the fact that you can hear the Fiat's diesel engine coming from an eighth of a mile away. "How are you?"

"Okay. That color looks nice. It looks like it belongs in the house. That other color," the oak's natural color he meant, "looked cheap."

My mind flew to a blog post I had come across about dark stained floors and light walls, and how it made the floors look "sumptuous". I guess it was right, even though I already knew that. I have loved the combination for years, particularly after after having a home in Sweden published somewhere I have long since forgotten. We admired the floor together for a moment, and I could see the whole room, right in that instant, all done. The desk with its soaring bookshelves and tidy drawers for files, the shallow closet space behind the wood panels that are actually doors, and how cleverly they would store my ironing board and cleaning supplies, maybe some linen folded very tightly, the refinished leather club chairs and my gleaming blond mahogany piano, a kilim on the floor and lamps casting a soft glow on it all.

My little heaven on earth, my haven, outside the garden in bloom, and my husband's arms, of course.

"Well, I'm coming inside," he said, breaking my reverie. I returned to massaging wax into the floorboards.

This morning, I came downstairs to bask in the delight of my floor and buff it to a soft sheen, and I saw the very apparent marks of where the strokes of my brush overlapped when I applied the last coat of stain, or maybe the second to last. I was appalled.

It ruined my day. I sunk into a deep funk.

"Why could I not see this the evening before," I asked myself?

Myself shrugged and appeared nonplussed.

"How can you not care?" I demanded.

Well, what are you going to do about it? Start over? Sand the whole thing down and do it right this time? Get a professional to do it like every source says you should unless you are actually experienced at it? I didn't like her attitude. I counted to 10.

"Be quiet," I snapped, anyway. "Maybe it will look better once I have buffed."

Suit yourself, said myself. We both knew. I didn't want to let on, though. I didn't want to give myself the satisfaction of admitting that I hadn't done such a bang up job, after all, despite my glow from the previous evening.

"Mom?" Sam called from the living room. He was home to finish a project he should have begun months ago, or at least over the spring vacation that just finished.

"Oh, Sam!" I wailed, "Come see what I did. I messed it up when I stained the wood." He came up behind me in the small space cluttered with tools and looked over my shoulder at the floor with me. "See? Do you see how you can see where the brush strokes overlap? It's darker?" I motioned to an especially egregious area, where the overlaps looked like the arcs of the wave that has justed crashed down on the beach, those little arcs that reach the farthest up the beach and drag sand, pebbles and hermit crabs back down to the waterline.

"Yeah?" It didn't seem to shock him.

"It looks terrible. You can tell it's stained."

"What are you going to do, do it over?" He sounded like myself. Pas de question!

"No! I can't do that," I moaned, "that would be way too much work, and I'd have to rent the sander all over again."

"It makes it look authentic, Mom." He said "authentic" the way you'd say "vintage", with the same appreciation. I nodded. I'd take that. Authentic.

"Well, it will get covered, mostly, with a rug, so I guess it won't be obvious," I said to his parting back.

If that's true, though, why did I feel so badly all day long?


....

Of mice and architects

Baccarat models "walnut"

Or shall I say of architects and men?

Which, then, am I? The point is that architects ought not be mice. That's why Ayn Rand made Howard Roark an architect and not, oh, a social worker or something. One needs to be decisive. Courageous. Assured. San regrets.

Even when you have suspect you really have ample reason to have lot of regrets. It is, then, what it is. You have chosen.

Wisely or not.

Please, just don't let me dry up and explode before I get to see it waxed, in case it helps. A lot.

I went darker still. I started with one half liter container of "dark oak". It was too red.

I bought one half liter container of "walnut" and decided to use it alone, after having made a sample mixing it with the "dark oak".

My husband thought it looked very nice, but he added, "Ce n'est pas aussi foncé que le parquet en haut." It was true. It wasn't as dark as the oak floors upstairs, as worn as they are.

"Je peux rajouter une deuxième couche," I said, trying to sound decisive, but definitely not courageous, and certainly not avec regrets, but just the right amount of sans regrets. Reassuring, in other words. Rassurante.

That worked. We loaded the sander into the car, and I went back to worrying, in the sound insulated chamber of my mind.

What if you don't get it right? And do you actually even know what you want? Myself asked me. Tiresome little person.

"I am sure I will," I declared, trying to communicate just the right degree of assuredness. The problem is that myself can hear me when I am talking to myself.

Sucks to be me.

So, rather liking the walnut stain and thinking that Baccarat looked quite stunning on it, setting one another off to a tee, I got out a half liter measuring glass, several plastic containers from take home Chinese food from some restaurant other than the one over in Bonnières (they use those aluminum ones that pinch-over cardboard tops), and I dug out the cap from a bottle of Medi Bacter that has marks for 1 ml, 5 ml and 10 ml and started mixing up various blends of the new container of "walnut" and the container of "wenge" I had picked up. I made samples with the single coat of "walnut" and added either another of straight "wenge" and mixes of "walnut" and various other things.

I discovered that it probably didn't matter what the hell I used. Alright, not true. I settled on 1 part "walnut" and 2 parts "wenge". I said I wanted it pretty dark.

I probably should have just used "ebony" and called it a day.

It wasn't easy to apply. It tends to leave little glops at the joints in the flooring, even when you wipe the excess off with an old cotton t-shirt. It also doesn't blend as easily in successive areas as did the lighter stain. I am tempted to apply a third light coat of straight "walnut" to see if it works to even things out, but I am impatient and not sure it's worth the additional time and trouble.

Or, had I used a narrower brush, had one existed, that would have let me really go board by board.

I am obsessing.

I should have just painted it black.


....

Oak flooring in

Wisp naps on her dogs, to keep warm

Alright, so it might be a little chilly in the house, but just as I feared, May arrived and brought with it the April we ought to have had, complete with chilly temperatures, rain showers and scuttling clouds. I might have to turn the heat back on, and they aren't even selling firewood anymore in the stores.

What's up with that? It's never cold in the summer? Yeah, right.

Not that we don't have firewood. We have a large pile of very large pieces of aged oak. The problem is splitting them so they can burn properly in our little wood-burning stove.

Never mind. I promised myself I wouldn't tell too much intimate stuff here, and his cutting of the wood might just take us into that territory. My husband trusts me.

So, it's been awhile. Yup. I have been contemplating fiction. Real writing. A place for the stuff that gets in the way of writing here, where it doesn't belong. When that happens, I can't write anything. Been busy, too, laying the solid oak floor in the "petit salon", and feeling pretty proud of ourselves, if I don't say so. It has come out quite well.

Today, I ordered the oak threshold from the wood shop and stained the floor. The guy at the wood shop looked a little dubious. I don't blame him. You see, it turns out that the new slab and our oak floor are perfectly horizontal, but the terracotta tile floor in the entry is... not.

Not even close.

I noticed this before we laid the floor, but there was nothing to do about it then. Something has to be horizontal around here, and I wasn't about to try to plane the sleepers to make the wood floor meet the terracotta floor along the length of the door to the room, while managing to keep the tongue and groove flooring lined up and even. You see, at one corner of the door, the slab is 6 cm below the adjacent finished floor, while at the center point it is 5.5 cm, and at the other end it is 5 cm. The threshold will align with the floor at one end, and then stick up past it by more and more until it hits a centimeter of difference near the small end stair case.

Not good.

I asked the guy to make me a threshold that is 23 mm thick, like the flooring, but which is planed so that along one side it goes from 23 mm to 13 mm, while respecting the 23 mm at the other three perimeters.

He said he'd do his best. I am choosing to feel very hopeful.

The assistant asked when I'd like it. I hoped to look very hopeful and humble, while communicating my sense of urgency.

"C'est urgent, non?" she suggested.

"Oui, si possible," I said, nodding my head. She wrote "Urgent" at the bottom of the order.

I do need it to move the piano in more easily, although it would be a dream come true not to have the piano until the sheetrock is in place. We could lay the 120 cm x 300 cm sheets flat on the paper-covered finished floor, then lay down plywood as a cutting surface and prepare it in there, rather than have to do that in the living room and carry them in. But, I don't want to ask too much of Monsieur.



The two old carp and the new carp and shubunkin are still missing.

I am not pleased.
....