Counting to 10

They're too tall

that's my fault

But it isn't all my doing. I can hardly even talk about it. Not that the pillars being a little too tall is even the issue really. It isn't. It just doesn't help.

No, it's the inability to read or to follow a plan, nay, to even consider using one until it's clear there is no choice. Then, I have to write instructions like you would for your son for how to make spaghetti balls. No, forget that, too complicated. Scrambled eggs. No. Boiled eggs. Not even poached.

Mom, how come they don't have shells on when you pack them for me?

See? It's like that.

It's why you still do their laundry and pick up their dirty clothes from around the hamper, when it's half-empty.

It's why you pick up the damp towel and hang it up before it becomes one with the floor covering and stiff, when there are towel racks in the bathroom right next door.

It's the "Why think when there's someone there to do that for me?".

This is what becomes of the plans, if they aren't left in the car while they start the work. On the ground, through the night, damp from the dew and the sweat of the previous day's work.

Georges appeared at the kitchen window, next to where I was trying to summon the courage to work on the drawings for the structure under the entry court paving and the new kitchen entry; the one they won't be doing because I have seen their carpentry skills, and it's true: my husband and I do have better ones. Instead, I was just feeling tense and defeated.

"Madame Sisyphe, vous pouvez venir deux minutes?" At least he doesn't ask me to come "just for a second". Two minutes is code for "come sit with us while we work and explain everything".

Georges bent back down besides Jose, where they had been trying to figure out how to make the uncut brick form the motifs. I listened.

"Vous êtes surs que vous ne voulez pas que je fasse des dessins avec les cotes exactes? Vous n'aurez à faire comme je vous l'indique." Georges considered my tenth proposition to make drawings of each and every brick and exactly how to cut it and finally accepted.

"Oui, Madame Sisyphe. Ca serait mieux."

From behind me, where I sat at the kitchen table, I heard loud thumps, like the fall of an ax over and over. I tried to imagine what sort of work on the brick would involve an ax and make a dull thud. And then I heard a car start up. I went out to look. A rope wrapped around the tree stump and led out to the truck straining at an odd angle in the narrow street. Jose stood and watched the stump moved toward him, millimeter by millimeter. It wasn't going anywhere. I leaned down with one of their tools and started to scrape away at the remaining dirt. I hit another big, uncut root. Jose saw me and came back over to look. I showed him a root as big around as my arm.

"Il y en a probablement d'autres comme ça. Il ne va pas bouger jusqu'à ce que vous les aurez trouvé et coupé." He nodded and took the ax, attacking the root. Georges came back in and looked. Jose told him in Portuguese that there was another root. Maybe more. Georges removed the rope from the stump, and I headed back inside.

I came back out with my sketches of each brick, measured from a new drawing on the computer, measurements to match the ones Georges gave me, and gave it to Jose. Georges came over to look. And then it came to me: this, too, was pointless. I felt very, very tired.

They looked at it without really understanding what they were seeing. I began to explain, wishing I could go get my hair cut. Anything.

Just.Not.Be.There.

It didn't seem possible. I pointed to the motif, each brick of the same cut numbered alike, and then to the series of numbered diagrams, showing precisely how to cut each one so that it would work. I might as well have done it with the orangutans or the chimpanzees at the zoo. Georges picked up a brick and showed me the wide face.

"Alors, je marque ici et je coupe --"

"Non, Georges," I said, turning the brick in his hand to show him the narrow face. "Ca c'est la face qu'on voit. Il faut marquer là et là et couper." I pointed to where to measure and cut. He still looked doubtful. Jose took the brick and showed me the wide face.

"On marque ici et là --" I shook my head no and turned the brick to the narrow face. This is where you mark and cut it, here and there. They both looked confused. I took the brick, the tape measure and the pen, marked it out and handed it back. Georges cut it, returned and moved it around, looking for it's place. I picked up the drawing, took back the bit of cut brick and oriented it according to the drawing. Then, I set it in its place and took another brick. I did the same. Georges cut it and started to look for where to put it.

I'll spare us all the details. Finally, after a few more, "Ah! Oui! Je comprends, je comprends." Except he didn't. I suggested that they work it out in a frame on the ground and returned to my drawings, and, after a time, the rhythmic thud of the ax started again.

I went back out only to find Jose alone in the courtyard, sitting by the pillar, looking hot and bothered. Georges was down at the café.

"Madame Sisphye," said Jose, sounding the most put out I had ever heard. "Ca ne marche pas." I saw what he had done in the frame on the sidewalk between the pillars.

No, Jose, of course it doesn't work because it is cut wrong. It can't possibly work like that. If you would either just listen or follow the plan, it would work.

Georges returned. He looked hot and bothered, too. I was that close to letting them have it, except what good does that ever do.

"Georges, je vais vérifier quelque chose. Peut-être CAD a foiré sur les dimensions alignées. Si non, ça marche." He listened and nodded to my suggestion.

"Oui, Madame Sisyphe, parce que quand je perds mon temps comme ça, ça me frustre." Subtext: you have asked us to do something complicated, we don't get it and we don't feel like losing any more money because we can't understand.

Yeah, Georges, when we lose our time, it frustrates all of us, I thought; I said, "Laissez-moi aller voir vite."

"Oui, laisse la aller voir," said Jose, showing solidarity with me.

The dimension was perfect. I rotated the thing the 67° so it would be parallel to the worksheet and pulled a linear dimension. Same thing. Their mistake. I returned and began setting up the bricks they had cut. It came very close to working, except the one they had cut wrong, trying (I'm sure) to find a solution, certain I was wrong, when the drawing shows very well that it works.

I took up the measuring tape and began measuring the cut bricks, off by up to 1.5 cm.

"Elles sont parfois un petit peu pas le même mesure."

"Elles sont parfois plus que 1 cm trop court ou trop long."

"Ca fait la différence?"

"Ca fait toute la différence." I had just gotten off the phone, ranting to my husband between patients. He had called me back after I told him in the middle of an appointment that I was about to throw myself from the roof.

"Reste avec eux et marque les coupes toi-même."

"C'est ce que je faisais! J'ai d'autres choses à faire, tu sais, et même si je reste avec eux, ben, ça leur fâche au bout d'un moment, je suis sure. Et moi? Pourquoi je dois le faire quand on paie des professionnels?" Translation of my tantrum: That's what I was doing, staying with them to mark all the pieces and oversee it, but I have other things to do, you know, and even if I stay with them, well, that must irritate them after awhile, I'm sure. And I? Why do I have to do is when we are paying professionals?

I looked at Georges, who was about to start protesting, the same smile on his face that means that I can't get mad because he's smiling. The hell I can't, but I won't. "Georges, je vais les marquer toutes moi-même. Vous n'avez qu'à les couper plus exactement." He started to protest. I headed him off at the starting block, insisting on my own point rather than hear him complain that the work is complicated (read expensive) for them.

"Non, ça va. Je vais les marquer toutes. Comme ça, vous n'aurez pas en vous soucier." What more could he say? I was going to take care of everything. He'd have nothing to worry about, except cutting them with a wee bit more precision.

This brought us to the level of the courtyard. The ax falls. They had been digging up the surface getting ready to prepare for the concrete slab. Jose had looked like he was going to pass out earlier, when I found him leaning on the long ax handle. Feeling sorry for your workers is a very dangerous thing. You either give in to their endless hinting and pay them more, or you do the work for them. So far, we were shooting two for two.

"Combien on doit creuser, Madame Sisyphe?" asked Georges.

"La chappe va faire combien encore?" How thick would the slab be?

"6 cm, avec de la feraille, 6 cm ça va." I usually see 10 cm. Whatever.

"36 cm en dessous du sol fini de la maison." His eyebrows flew up. He'd have to dig. I was learning to interpret quickly.

"Et la pente de la rue?" How much slope would there be from the step down from the street?

"Il faut mésurer."

A little rough calculation involving a stack of bits of brick, a few slender lengths of wood, and other for a spike, a bit of lumber and a level showed that they definitely didn't want two small steps at the addition.

There was also the question of the change in form of the courtyard and how much of it would come under the new contract I'd need for the walk and patios in front of the "petite maison". I knew he'd want to stop the courtyard along the line of the house like it was before the idea for the entry. Now, that many square feet had to be shifted elsewhere and still counted in the old contract and the levels had to be prepared so the later work would coordinate. Georges looked dubious.

"Aie aie! il va falloir qu'on casse ça aussi," said Jose, pointing to the low wall under the hébé. I nodded.

"Je vous l'ai dit avant. Ecoutez, puisqu'on fait l'entrée, il faut changer la forme de la cour et enlever cette plante pour pouvoir passer." Jose nodded his head. He was only trying to understand things from a physical point of view. Georges had his head full of what I might be trying to get away with in terms of cash money. "Il y a une partie de la cour qui se deplace d'ici," I pointed to where the new entry will go, "là-bas." I pointed to where the low wall and the hébé were. "Et puis, il ya une nouvelle partie qui compte dans le contract que vous disiez que vous ne pourrez pas faire avant novembre. Il faut la préparer quand-même, si non, on risque d'avoir des problèmes." The clouds dispersed from Georges's brow. I had made it clear that I understood that some of what lay around where we stood counted as new work that was part of a future contract, not all, but some, and that we had to do a minimum of it now to make sure the future work matched.

We returned to the question of how many steps. My turn to give in again. What did it matter? It was stupid to have only 10 1/2 cm high steps anyway, so what did one or two matter. I sat on my haunches in the chopped up dirt trying to stay out of the sun and considered the question. The argument of the wall against which I was leaning being fragile for that kind of excavation was fairly convincing.

"D'accord. Partez comme pour une marche." I got up and went back inside.

I'd had enough for one day.
....

The brick pillars reach the top

My mock-up

The top part, the capitol, as it were, isn't cemented yet. We neared the top, and the wish I had to use a detail one often sees in brick pillars in Normandy gnawed at me a little more. I hesitated to ask; they have already been fairly clear that what they are producing for me far exceeds what they thought they were in for, as nice as (they admit) it is. It's just that nice costs time, which equals money. Eroded profits.

It's just that I thought we were on the same page from the beginning. But, that's mostly in the past now.

I asked. Jose looked a little doubtful about what I was proposing. They work more in stone than in brick. I climbed up onto the ingenious system of scaffolding they had concocted out of found materials.

"Madame, attention à vous -- vous allez peut-être tomber -- vous avez besoin d'un escabo?" I hoisted myself up with my arms, pushing off with my feet from the guardrail along the street.

"Non, merci. Ca va très bien." I set to work showing them how to lay the brick, Georges cutting bricks in half and then cutting them down a little more. Jose started in on the second side, gingerly, the bricks in the wrong angle. Just as gingerly, I said "Non, pas comme ça, mais," and I turned the brick to 90°, "comme ça." He nodded and picked up another brick, began to mark it into a wedge shape, like a camembert. I watched. It wasn't going to work, but he wasn't going to understand that until he saw it. This time, Georges had gotten it first.

All the way around, we placed whole bricks at the corners, at 45° to the center axis, and trimmed half-bricks at 90°, two each side. I picked up whole bricks to weigh them down at the center and began placing the next course all the way around.

"Je vois!" said Georges, breaking into a big smile, "Elle sait ce qu'elle fait," She knows what she doing, he told Jose. I had scored some points.

I finished and set down the bricks he was handing me into the last course, set somewhat back inside again. "Je vois. J'ai vu ça avant, près de Vernon." He had seen the detail, too, he realized now that I had it in place. It's really very typical in the region just to the north of us, only some 15 minutes away, where the architecture begins to employ more brick and less stone. It's a detail that speaks of a slightly more important home in a village, which ours, as small as it is, set apart from the others, is. He stepped back and looked up at the column and the house behind it.

"Les motifs sont vraiment bien comme ça maintenant, hein?" I nodded and answered, the dark bands of the fake timber in natural stucco did look even better with the brick pillars in place. They'll look better still once they have been darkened with the pigmented, natural stucco based stain.

"Si je peux vous le demander, vous avez quel age, Madame Sisyphe?" I laughed. You may ask, Georges. I am not particular about that. In fact, I am rather proud to give my age, able as I still am to scramble up onto a scaffolding and lay a few bricks, my lipstick fresh and my new t-shirt dusted with brick dust.

"J'ai 47 ans, 48 dans 2 semaines." Feeling good, too, especially now that I can finally go to the gym again with my toe healed at last from the second melanoma surgery.

The samples for the brick for the entry court, the walk and patio near the petite maison arrives tomorrow or the next day. Moving along, but I can't be absent a day.
....

Fear and apprehension in Moosesucks

Spy photography,
trying not to be seen up on the balcony

The alarm clock went off. I turned it off, and waited for the second alarm 7 minutes later. If I am serious about going back to sleep, I change it to a minute before the time and, well, go back to sleep. Today, there was no chance. I was tense.

Tense and nervous. Can't relax. No psycho killers. Just the day before the return to school (and it isn't even my return to school; that would be much easier to bear) and September 1, the day we could expect the workers back.

Audouin rolled over and moved a few centimeters closer, "Tu boudes encore?"

I thought about it. No, fear and apprehension had moved into the place of a nearly week-long pout. Or, perhaps it was fear and apprehension all along. Add to the return to school and of the workers the fact that I have to go shopping for something to wear to a wedding on September 12, and my cup runneth over.

He lay there awhile longer, perhaps waiting for signs of intent to communicate on my part -- it wasn't intentional; I think I qualified as catatonic -- and then he said, "Je vais me lever."

The rain was falling steadily outside the closed metal shutters. Last evening's wind was not for nothing. It came up while I was applying a third coat of the black vegetable-tar stain to the balcony on a perfectly cloudless early evening, following an exquisite day, and then the neighbor came by, then we decided to have a little appératif, and then he went for his wife and the little ones, whereupon we sat out in the garden and drank too much authentic Porto, direct from his family's vineyards in Portugal, while their somewhere around 5 year-old-son played in the fish basin. It isn't due to Baccarat, our black Labrador retriever, this time that the newest water lily bud will never open.

I drifted back into a sleep troubled by strange dreams of people I hardly knew, but who my husband, who was also there, knew perfectly well. I was especially aggravated when I came into the kitchen -- my grandmother's kitchen, for heaven's sake -- and found the table covered with all kinds of things he had brought home after a dinner. Not food. Plastic tumblers, empty bottles and things he said would be "useful". That's all well and good, I thought, he isn't the one who has to find a place to put them away until I have use for enormous clear plastic tumblers. Not in France.

The church bells chimed the hour. 10 am. I don't stay in bed that late. This was serious.

And then I heard it. Voices. A truck. I jumped out of bed and opened the metal shutters. I saw my husband's head bobbing along just along the edge of the balcony planks as he crossed the terrace, went out the gate and got into the Voyager, parked in from of the telecom building next door. Maybe it's just someone for a repair, I hoped. That's when the truck went past the gate, "ENOV" was all I had time to see painted on the side before it slid past the house. That was enough: BATRENOV.

They were here. Back right on time for work to start again in September as promised. Right along with the rain.

Sam called a moment ago. I was expecting the call. He has to ride his scooter nearly an hour from across our department. He left on a beautiful Sunday afternoon for what turned into a 36-hour gathering of friends before school starts, and he didn't have a thing to protect him from the wet and the rain.

"It figures," his turn to pout, "all it does is rain here, from September until May."

That is just a little pessimistic. There are some sunny days.

I guess I have to get busy and get ready to oversee the work. It really wasn't reassuring the day that Georges looked doubtfully at the brick pillar and wall design, then back up at me and said, with an air of newfound hope, "You'll be here to help us, won't you?"

I see the brick on the truck bed, and it looks browner than I recall from the manufacturer's supply facility. It's true that it's called "brown brown" ("brun marron" translated), but it was based on dark reds, and that's what the catalog says, too.

Inshallah.
....

I can be thin forever

Sam's dragonfly, or luciole, photo

June 30, 2009

Could it be that gluten, sugar and lactose (a sugar, yes, I know) make your brain function better?

The end of my brain function and my blogging activity associates quite nicely with my telling myself I can be thin forever and the consequent adieu to breads, dairy and refined sugars, and my brain starting to feel a pressure and a blankness I can't quite describe. Or, is it really to do with my fear of failure? Not about changing my eating habits -- that's going quite well and is surprisingly easy so long as I do eat, which I do, regularly --, but about making design decisions here that will prove once and for all that I am nulle and utterly lacking in real creative talent. (Trust me, it is very scary.)

And maybe a little fear of spending the money needed to realize my induction into the Hall of Failure.

Maybe my little bit of perfectionism and its associated tendency to overdo?

Yesterday, I was taken to the warehouses and offices of Weinerberger brick in Monthléry, south of Paris. Georges informed me the other day that he needed the thin brick for the chimney so that he could take the scaffolding down from the courtyard side of the house and get the entry courtyard work going. This also meant that I'd have to get serious about picking the brick for the paving, which had been something of an issue with my associate, otherwise known as mon mari.

Georges, to be clear, is not my husband; he runs the work on the renovations.

"Mais, pourquoi tu ne veux pas mettre des pavés de Paris? Ils sont beau," said my husband. I don't disagree. I know that Paris paving stones made of granite are nice. I know, also, that they are easy to find and install. I just didn't see them with this house, here. And like Louis Benech, I like brick on the ground. However, these are not objective grounds for decision-making. They are sort of whiney, "but I like it" grounds that can be elevated to the standing of You see, pavés de Paris are sort of gray and cold, and I see something more luminous and warm with the ochre of the house. Also, they establish a more rapid rhythm, without direction, a different textured mineral carpeting underfoot. In truth, they'd be just fine, another option is all.

"Tu vois, les pavés de Paris sont un peu gris et froid et je vois quelque chose de plus lumineux, chalereux avec l'ochre de la chaux de la maison. Aussi, ils établissent un rhythm rapide, sans direction, une autre texture pour ce tapis minéral sous les pieds." A vrai dire, ils seraient très bien aussi, juste une autre option. He nodded, a little too dubious to please me. I started to feel insecure again.

What if I am wrong? I live in dread. Dread. The sort that makes you dream just before waking about your son's résponsable de niveau and his choice to stay in ES at his present school, despite everyone's recommendations otherwise. It's his life, right?

Things are great.

I approached Georges in the garden the day before yesterday and informed him that I was taking his request for information seriously.

"J'ai rendez-vous avec le type pour la brique demain matin. Je l'aurais choisie pour l'après-midi." He looked relieved.

I grabbed my motorcyle gear and headed down to leave for my 10 am appointment outside the cinéma at the shopping mall, Parly 2, in Versailles. I was already sweating as the temperatures were heading up into the 30's again (this is Europe, we use Celsius, remember?). I pulled the huge rolling gate open and stuck the key into the ignition to release the direction. The sun was shining directly onto the instrument panel, but did I see no indicator lights? No. No no no. I pulled the bike out over the tall grass, weeds and concrete threshhold, and hopped on, sweating freely now after my exertion. It might be best to check before I closed the gate again. I hit the starter.

Nothing.

Not one tiny sound. The battery was as dead as a doornail.

Audouin! Tu m'as refait le coup!, I howled to the skies, climbing back off and pushing it back through the tall grass, over the threshhold and the weeds and grass on the garden side. He moved my bike on Sunday, leaving the ignition in the position that leaves the The kickstand wouldn't go down. I didn't have the right angle. Another bead of sweat trickled down from my unwashed hair under my helmet. I hadn't counted on being that hot, but there was no time to think about remedying my appearance. I was late, and if there was any non-vacation morning traffic on the drive to Versailles, I was really in trouble. I moved the bike to where the kickstand would take, retrieved my stuff from the rear case and headed up to stow my helmet, change my boots for sneakers and exchange the motorcycle keys for the car keys.

No workers. Still. I had waited, hoping to see them before I left, and stuck a note finally on the cement mixer. It hadn't fallen to the ground.

Mr. Becquart was looking a little hot around the collar and out of patience when I pulled in to the space one car over from him at Parly 2.

"Monsieur Becquart?" He nodded. "Vous avez reçu mes messages, j'espère?" He nodded and inclined his head toward the seat next to him. I climbed in, feeling the tiniest bit like a fraud. He was taking an architect to see their facilities and choose brick. Architects have offices and do lots of lucrative (for their suppliers) projects. So, I was playing a little lose with the truth.

"Alors, vous êtes architecte. Vous avez un cabinet à Mantes?" He didn't lose time. It would be necessary to obfuscate. Just a little.

"Je fais des petits projets. Mon but serait d'en faire plus et surtout dans la rénovation résidentielle." There, that said everything, and nothing. We talked the state of architecture and the building trades in my two countries, I being sure to get in as much detail from my professional experience as I could, all the way to Monthléry, where he introduced me to his supériere -- Vous avez déjà utilisé la brique apparente dans vos projets? he had asked hopefully, but rather doubting a positive reply; Oui! Beaucoup, I was able to tell him, perfectly truthfully, Mais pour la plupart aux Etats-Unis --, where I chose my brick, and then we talked family and terroir, the French sense of place and of the land and home, all the way back. I was feeling like an architect again by the time I got back into my car. It lasted until my husband arrived.

"Alors, as-tu trouvé la brique," he asked, leaning on the sample box.

"Oui, c'est là, sous tes mains." He opened the box.

"C'est combien?" He didn't lose much time either.

"Je ne sais pas. Pas beaucoup. La brique n'est pas très cher." That was like putting a bandaid on a limb amputation.

"Il faut le savoir. Si on le met comme ça, sur le champ, ça coutera plus cher car il en faudra plus. Il faut savoir."

"Mais, ça ne fait aucun sense. C'est toi qui voulais une brique moins large car tu préfères l'aspet, mais si on ne la pose sur le champ, ce n'est même pas la peine de se faire des soucis entre une brique à 65 mm et une brique à 50 mm, ce que tu m'as dit que tu préfères nettement. En plus, il y a eu une brique que j'ai beaucoup aimé, mais je ne l'ai pas choisi car elle ne vienne qu'en 65 mm!" It's true. The brick I thought I'd love only came in 65 mm, which Audouin said he didn't like when we looked at the catalog together the evening before my architect brick expedition. He had gone so far as to eliminate any he liked if they weren't available in the narrower dimension, and Monsieur Becquart had been of the same opinion. The fill spaces for the brick are narrow, and the wider brick might not complement the scale of the space.

"Oui, mais c'est une question d'argent. Il faut le savoir et puis décider." I suddenly felt even more exhausted than when I walked in the door from Monthléry. What, I asked myself, is the point? The answer came then. The point is give him the information, and he will bend as the willow to your will.

That is when he will feel empowered to let me decide.

"Ou, peut-être on peut les couper en deux..."
....