Standstill

Water lilies

Paralysis. In the house, anyway. Industry outside the house in the garden. If I were really going to call a halt to the work, I was going to take full advantage of it to at least do some of the annual work in the part I can do, and for which I need little to no help, and no workers: the garden.

Not that I wouldn't love some of each. Help and garden workers, that is.

June comes and the evenings stretch out until nearly eleven o'clock, offering those additional hours we claim we really need and want all year long to have a hope of getting everything done. I can tell you that for all those extra hours, more would be needed to get anywhere near getting everything done, and the rain's arrival, just as things are beginning to look rather inviting in the garden, doesn't help. You can have all the flowering shrubs you want, but without sunshine it is only dull; under the pouring rain, the invitation is off. The rain invited itself to Roland Garros and wrecked havoc with the early matches, making putting a roof over center court the main story.

The rain also invited itself into our garden, making watering everything unnecessary, but making enjoying the work impossible. If it gets hot, it will soon rain, and when it rains, it will pour.

My husband took his book out into the garden to read after returning with the baguette. I heard him sniffing, so I knew he was out there, and I peeked around the corner to see him in the deck chair in his motorcycle boots, black jeans, a sweater and his Northface jacket, suitable for skiing, looking for all the world like a man getting to be of "a certain age".

"Tu veux un foulard et un chapeau aussi?" I asked. He turned his head from Ken Follet and smiled.

"Il ne fait pas très chaud, tu sais." Yes, I knew it wasn't exactly hot out, but it wasn't cold, either. I looked at my light, 3/4 sleeve t-shirt and feet in sandals, and back at him.

"Il fait plutôt doux. T'es en train de tomber malade?" It was at least 20° C out. Was he, I suggested, possibly getting sick? He shook his head and came in to help set the table.

"Déjeunons-nous déhors?" he wondered, clearly hoping not, "parce qu'il fait un peu frais. On serait peut-être mieux à l'intérieur." Would we eat outdoors, he wondered aloud? Because it was a little chilly out; we might be better inside. I shook my head again, half tempted to go and get the thermometer and take his temperature. He carried the plates out to the table.

"Tu n'as pas froid comme ça?" he asked my son, who was wearing a short-sleeved t-shirt and shorts at lunch. "Il ne fait pas très chaud."

"Non, ça va bien," said my son, and we all gazed at my husband. He looked at his daughter, who was wearing a light sweater over a sleeveless top. She raised her eyebrows enough to suggest that she was fine, as well. Was he going to ask anyway? He had removed his jacket.

"Nous allons tous très bien," I told him with a smile to suggest that he might be crazy, if he weren't sick. "Il fait plutôt doux, tu sais. Tu ne veux pas que j'aille te chercher ta veste?"

No, thank you, he said. I'll be alright without my jacket, he added, drawing his shoulders together for comfort.

It has been a long week for all of us. Between the temperature shifting from 33° C to 14°C in the space of an afternoon, sunshine giving way to drenching rain, his long days and the nights on duty, a concert in the middle of the week in far-away Paris, my guests, and Sam's upcoming bac, the worries that accompany being parents, and the worse ones that attach themselves to being in the situation of not being the parents of the same children, each enjoying the benefit of his or her own point of view and the certainty of its superiority, there is ample reason and opportunity to fall victim to an early summer cold, or depression anyway.

If you are I, that is. The one who is actually going to worry, because, and finally, it is easier than loving, which is all, some would say, that you really can do. I prefer concrete solutions. Real progress. Outcomes.

But, then so did my husband. For the "petit salon", at least. The kids, well, kids will take care of themselves, wood, on the other hand, cannot saw itself, sheetrock cannot install itself.

I worry about both.

But, that's not all. With guests coming, it was necessary to visit the guest rooms and take stock. The sheets to be washed, the towels placed in the armoir in the bathroom, the spiders -- alas -- to be vacuumed up. Maybe I would also move the table from the little room into the other, larger room, where it could serve as a desk. I tried (half-heartedly) to move the moving box filled with stuff from where the table would go. It wasn't budging. Forget the table. But -- what was that along the wall on the sisal carpeting? The new sisal carpeting. Was it -- mold?

Mold?

My eyes raced up the wall. There were -- blisters in the paint.

Blisters. In. The. Paint. The brand new paint job, finished in the winter, the paint ordered on-line from Flamant, and applied over painstakingly repaired walls. So, the shower was leaking again, but how could it be? We had just caulked it. I dialed my husband's beeper. I knew he was seeing patients. I was seeing red.

"Allo."

"C'est moi."

"Oui?" He was using his most pleasant voice, so the patient wouldn't imagine it was his wife. His wife sounding very, very aggravated.

"La douche dans la petite maison, tu l'as réparée, non?"

"Oui."

"Bon. Elle fuit à nouveau."

"Pardon?"

"La douche, elle fuit."

"Comment le sais-tu?" he asked very politely, giving away nothing to his very patient patient.

"Il y a de la moisissure le long du mur -- le nouveau jonc de mer -- et des cloques dans la peinture." That's how I knew it. Molded sisal carpeting along the wall adjoining the shower stall and blisters in the paint just above it is a pretty certain sign of a leak in the shower on the other side of the wall.

"Ah bon! Tu es sûre que ça vient de là et pas du toit?" I sighed. Yes, I was absolutely positive that this water damage did not come from the leaky roof, covered with the roofer's tarps until he can get here and replace the whole damn thing, which is what I told my husband.

"As-tu installé un bac sous la douche quand tu l'as installée?" I asked him, making sure to sound menacing.

"Ah, non."

Ah, no shower pan. That could do it.

"Je vais appeler le plombier pour qu'il la voie. Je n'en peux plus de cette douche, et on ne s'en sort pas." And not only the shower, but what appears so often to be ample opportunities to lose my mind in this house.

"D'accord. C'est bien."

So, what did I learn? Always call my husband and announce things while he is seeing a patient.

The very next morning, nearly on my way out, the plumber arrived. He did not think a shower pan was necessary, since it sits on a concrete slab, but he did point out where the caulk was cracking. Already. If new, professionally applied caulk didn't do it, then we'd talk about tearing everything up and installing a shower pan.

On his way back from the truck with the caulk and an assortment of other tools, he stopped to chat. We know each other very well, for a plumber and a homeowner. It's normal with this house, and ideal to stay on best relations. We talked about this and that, and then, suddenly, he said something that triggered an unpleasant memory: Georges (don't ask) calling me out to the spot just under the window above the entry toilet, where he pointed into a hole he had dug, and there was the sewer pipe, with a big hole in it.

"Je me suis dit qu'il était toujours plus humide dans cet endroit, alors je me suis permis de creuser, et j'ai trouvé ça, Madame Sisyphe!" He sounded so proud; he was saving us from our ignorance of a broken sewer pipe at our main toilet.

Imagine that. My worker, who is so very, very busy, had time to notice that it seemed unusually wet in this particular area right next to the cement mixer and the bags of chaux piled up, the monceau of sand, and not only to notice, but to dig a hole to see why. My, my, imagine that. Mon oeil, I had thought at the time, asking him to fill the hole back up, the all the popos and the pipi traveling just under the surface of the dirt right next to the house.

That was more than a year ago. I told our plumber about it, and we set to digging, and there it was, the broken PVC pipe.

"Et oui," said the plumber. It's really broken. He poked around some more and pointed out that there was a leak. A leak?

"Oui, ça fuit de quelque part," he looked up from the hole and up the wall, "il n'y a pas un autre toilet là haut?"

Yes, there is another toilet up there on the second floor, just above this one, but it has been condemned for several years, precisely because we couldn't stop the water from running into it. We headed upstairs to look. There was the soup spoon my husband had jammed into the mechanism in the wall to stop it from running. It was quiet. Avoiding looking at the black mold all over the walls in this space, the door to which remains sealed like the ark of the covenant (sort of like the dirt placed back over the broken sewer pipe), I glanced at the sink, filled with green stuff, the plumber's eyes tracking with mine (how did he know where I was going to look?), just as a drop of water hit the algae and then another and another in rapid succession.

"A-ha!" cried the plumber.

"Ah oui," acknowledged the homeowner, "je l'avais oublié ça. Pourriez-vous mettre tout ça dans votre planning? Je voudrais tout arracher, et vous pouvez couper l'eau. On verra pour leur remplacement, le lavabo et le toilette, une fois que j'aurai trouvé une solution pour ces murs." He smiled compassionately as we gazed at a crack, spreading into a hole in the wall behind the closet across the small bedroom.

Maybe this part of the house will just fall off, taking this moldy half-bath and the "petit salon" with it.

"Je reviendrai après le déjenuer réparer le tuyau," he said, and we said our good-byes, I heading up to Normandy for the afternoon, he heading to have lunch and return to repair our sewer line.

The next day, there was a much larger hole, and there in the bottom, the pipe, broken in at least 3 places. It had poured the previous afternoon. He'd had to stop. The following morning, he returned and took me to look more closely at the affair. He pointed to a round cap on a vertical pipe, telling me that was an access to the pipes, in case they became clogged. Normally, it sat a good 30 cm above the place where it had come to rest. Did someone, he ask me, drive a heavy piece of equipment, a truck perhaps, over the area? Because, something very heavy had squashed it flat and broken the pipes. I looked at the gate, not large enough for a small car, let alone a truck.

"Non," I shook my head, looking back to the mess at my feet, "seulement la bétonneuse." Just the cement mixer. And, maybe, years ago, his employer's digger, when they had dug the trench to lay the pipe to connect the rest of the house -- the kitchen and the showers -- to the sewer line.

What did it matter now? We were paying.

And we'll be paying for the millwork, too. I am going to have to make a set of drawings for the millwork in the entire lower house, including all the details, and get it priced. We need professional help, or we'll never get ourselves out of this.

Or, I'll never be happy.

Along with that, pricing for the entry, the walk and patios, and the main bath. Choices -- bad, sad choices of the compromise sort -- might have to be made.

And, I'll never be happy.

At least the sewage is running contained in nice plastic piping now.
....

Un heureux hasard

Putting the brushes down, for now

Ta da!

I cleaned it up just for you. Now, I am about to make a mess of it again, taking everything from the petit salon out there to unclutter the living room, where it's all piled up, until the petit salon is ready to be furnished, which -- by God -- it will be.

I swear it.

I am so happy about this. Really. This room was just awful, and now it is not. It's amazing what some spackling compound painstakingly applied to bumpy, White Mountain Frosting type "specialty" paint in white with bright yellow brushed over it can do, along with a decent color choice (yellow and rust orange are an interior decoration don't). See one month ago today by clicking here. Note especially the open corners that allowed the ivy to find its way inside.

If I want ivy in the room, I will train it on the walls. Merci.

If you click here, you can see it in a much earlier phase of work, back in June of last year, the day I had more flash removed from my second toe on my right foot to make absolutely certain all the bad melanoma was gone.

And, if you are a real glutton for punishment, or really love watching rooms change colors, just click on the tag (libellés) "Guest rooms".

The color was the big issue in this room, and oddly, the color I selected looks nothing like the sample once it is on the walls. You can get an idea of what I mean by looking at the photos. In some, it appears much yellower, which is the color that is closest to the sample chip. But, as soon as I started painting, I saw a light celadon green, which, by the way, appears to have a huge tolerance in its definition, from what I see on Google images.

It looks an awful lot like the fennel seeds you took to Leroy Merlin, when you went with Audouin to pick out a color to replace the light blue.

"I know," I replied to myself. "Strange, isn't it? I couldn't find the color there, I pick an entirely different color, and I wind up with the color."

Serendipity, hunh? Or maybe it was just meant to be, and you knew it, said myself.

"Perhaps. But you know what's really interesting?" I didn't wait to let myself reply, "The fennel seeds are really many colors that give an impression of color. No one of those colors is the color of a fennel seed. But this paint, it manages to capture the various colors that tell me 'fennel seed'."

Myself looked at the wall with me and said, I see just what you mean.

I was so excited, brushing this wonderful Flamant paint on with my 5" Flamant brush, watching the color I had wanted appear on my walls, except -- it wasn't really what I had intended with the print I used as the basis for the color selection. I crossed the room to get it and place it near the freshly applied paint.

It'll do. It's not bad, you know.

Myself was right. It worked.

Then, my husband went out to see it the next day.

"C'est pas mal," he pronounced, before going on, "un peu triste quand même." My face fell, but he had a suggestion, "Il faudra peut-être de la couleur pour la rendre plus gaie."

I thought he'd really like it, myself said to me.

"Me, too," I whispered back.

"C'est la couleur que tu cherchais chez Leroy Merlin, non?"

He noticed!

"I know. Can you believe it?" I asked myself.

"Ce n'était pas vraiment intentionnel," I admitted. "En fait, c'est drôle car c'est un hasard total. Un heureux hasard, je suppose."

He and myself nodded together.

The summer room

Winter morning in the summer room

That's the name that came to me for it as I froze to death painting the exterior wall between the windows, snow swirling just beyond the panes of glass, at the point the farthest from the radiator. The best way to be warm in this room is to remain on the top step of the ladder. The heat is all up at that sloped ceiling. Thinking about using it as an office felt discouraging; all I kept thinking about was the heat bill to keep it comfortable. When it was a bedroom full time, it wasn't so bad because when you're in bed, you have the radiator by you, and you are nestled under the quilt. It's different when you are sitting at a desk, or in a chair.

You're only going to want to use this room when it's warm out, myself said to me.

"I know." I laid my hand flat on the cold wall and sighed.

The Summer Room, myself added.

"You know, I kind of like that name. The color is like summer, too. Bright. Maybe I'll just stay in my own bed in the winter."



I have other reasons to want to just stay in bed. Too many. All you have to do is browse the last couple of posts to start to get an idea, but that would be so little of it. Today is a hard day. If you take the baseline of my quality of life being absolute and unbearable incertitude about whether my son can pass the baccalaureate -- familiarly called "the bac" -- at the end of the year and his feelings about that, how little he does to actually take the situation in hand, or how little he feels he really can do to make a difference in the outcome, and then add the K2 of home renovations with unreliable porters and too little money and too much time alone on the rock face because there really are things you can't do by yourself, the machine that measures the cardiac rhythm of my soul is beeping frantically.

And I am supposed to leave to ski for a week in a little more than one week and enjoy it. I know I am going to be fantasizing about finding a little apartment in the valley and building chalets and new stores for the city, until it starts to rain and reminds me how awful a valley enclosed by high peaks can be in dismal weather.

That's life, right? Just ask them out there in Whistler.

And then there's the Tea Party, which we are asked to consider taking more seriously as a political movement, the legitimate flip side of the Obama movement. Those who believe in the individual and no government to help govern a complex society, and those who believe in the power of the individual, too, but feel the necessity of a wise and mature government to help regulate and govern society. With Greece's self-wrought melt-down (the Americans of the EU by personal debt standards and Tea Partiers for all their ways to get around the need to pay taxes and declare income), Europe is having a similar debate.

But this is only making me feel worse. Much worse.

How do all these people stay calm talking about it on France Inter? I tuned in, and there was Joseph Stiglitz being interviewed this morning with an excellent simultaneous translation. Really. Listening to him, I felt pretty sure his home doesn't leak water, his windows don't run with condensation, the walls aren't crumbling with moisture, the woodwork is solid, and it is appointed with discriminating taste and dusted regularly. It didn't hurt that he's looking pretty good in European eyes for having been the lone voice crying out against banking and investment deregulation during the Clinton administration. And here I was, thinking, Wait! Can't we just blame the Republicans? We have to blame Clinton, too?

I braked to a stop at an intersection, and then crept forward to peer around the cars parked along the curb to my right to see if there was a car coming. At that very instant, a low-slung Hyundai SUV came barreling out past the last car and slammed on his brakes. He was yelling and gesturing before his window was all the way down.

"Mais regardez ce que vous faites! Vous avez un stop!" Really? I hadn't noticed that I had come to a full stop at the big red octagonal sign before lightly touching the accelerator to inch forward, only to have to stomp on the brakes or be knocked into the corner garden wall. I pressed the electric button to lower my own window and shouted over the top of his epithets.

"Monsieur, si vous ralentiriez vous auriez déjà moins de problèmes."

But, he didn't want to hear about the speed at which he was devouring this residential street. He didn't have a stop sign, I did, and to hell with the fact that it is not possible to see if a car is coming as fast as he was if you don't move forward a bit. I and anyone else who might have the misfortune to be in his path could wait until hell froze right to its very center without budging an inch or risk the consequences for their vehicle.

The car behind us beeped its horn. Still yelling, his window rolled up and his car moved off. The car behind him waited to let me go, but since I had the stop sign, I gestured for him to go ahead. The car behind him was absolutely not going to not let me go. I waved and moved on through the intersection, wondering how much more most of us can take.

I know I am right at the end of my frayed rope, and I hadn't even welcomed the workers, due at the house in an hour and a half, back for more misery. Worse, my cell phone was up next to my bed. No way to call my husband, probably sitting next to a woman with a sonogram probe up her vagina, anyway, and cry.

Right on the stroke of 10 am, Baccarat barked and my cell phone (yes, up beside my bed) started to ring. I was finishing the list of items needing to be completed by the renovation company before we could consider the contract satisfied, so I ignored it. Georges' face appeared at the panes of the French door.

Here we go, myself said to me.

"Here we go."

I proposed a cup of coffee, noting that there was no sign of the real laborer, José, and that Georges was moving with his air of not being about to do any work at all. Snippets from our conversation Tuesday came and went in my mind. I didn't want to help him out here. I wanted to make him get to the heart of the matter, which was that he was here to talk and not work, after all, and he wanted to wiggle out of their commitment by any crack open to him.

We looked at the shutters to determine which do and do not function properly and moved on through my list, including the problems with both French doors they had made and installed for the bedrooms, the water that runs down the wall of the end bedroom from the roof when it rains, the two decorative window rails they have let sit out of doors and unprotected since September, 2008, the drooping gutter that sends a torrent of water to collect at the corner of the house, the gate that rubs against the brick pillar, the missing door handles and lock. The list was long, and most of it puzzled him. How could it be?

"Bon, Georges, normalement si on veut qu'un projet soit réussi, il faut le finir rapidement. Si non, tout ce que vous faites est abîmé par le fait de n'être fait qu'à moitié."

"Mais, Madame Sisyphe (no, he used my last name), vous savez, ce projet, depuis le début --"

"No, Georges," I cut him off aussi sec, "nous ne sommes pas ici pour rediscuter pour le nième fois le triste parcours de ce projet et son maudit début. C'est fini ça. Nous avons renégocié le contrat avec vous pour en faire un nouveau, et tout ce qui précède ce contrat ne compte pour plus rien. Nous avons pris des choses sur nous pour vous alléger vos engagements et vous donner plus d'argent, et n'oubliez jamais," I looked at him extra fixedly here, "que Joachim est venu voir ce projet avant le premier contract qu'il nous a fait signer lui-même. Que vous dites autre chose ne change rien aux faits, et nous n'en discutons plus."

He started to speak and then stopped and let his gaze drift out to the other side of the gate, to where he surely preferred to be at that moment, and where his partner for the day was hovering. That didn't mean I had been acknowledged right. It just means that Georges doesn't really bother arguing, which is what he had really come to do -- quelle surprise! He looked down at the ground at our feet, where a powdering of snow still remained from yesterday.

"Il fait froid," he said.

"Je remarque aussi que vous n'êtes pas venu pour travailler comme vous l'avez dit mardi, mais pour discutailler encore. Ca veut dire quoi ça?"

"Mais il est gelé," he protested just a little too feebly.

"Oui, mais il y a plein de choses que vous pouvez faire par ce temps," and I began to point them out, one after another, while he wished he could win his point and carry the day. Whatever it was they want, to walk away, to get more money. I'm quite certain it isn't just to have more time to finish, not with the reference he made to the "bands and stuff" in the brickwork on the ground. Hell, I'll end up doing that myself anyway, if it's anything like the brick pillars.

"La brique? Vous voulez qu'on vienne avec la brique?" Quelle question. Of course I wanted him to come with the brick. He had told me Tuesday that he would be coming with the brick. He had told me when he walked in the house that the brick was at Point P, waiting.

"Je sais, Georges. 7 m3 et 2 mètres linéaires d'angles."

"Vous les avez appelé?" he asked. I nodded. Yes, I had called them to verify.

"On va prendre quand même la bétonneuse," he continued, adding lamely, "elle prend de l'eau." As though the cement mixer hadn't been sitting in the wet for going on three months of inactivity already. This was not a good sign, but I didn't see what I could do. We had been considering it a hold of sorts on them. It's the last thing of theirs worth anything on our property, but I couldn't stop them from taking it. It isn't the real hold, anyway. That's sending the lawyer's letter, all ready and waiting at his office, and filing a complaint, which I thought I'd mention again very soon and followed him to the cement mixer. "Madame Sisyphe, on va s'en sortir oui ou non? Oui ou non?" and he heaved a great sigh.

He wasn't giving up. His job is to make me their accomplice, win me over to their way of seeing things. His partner's is to rough us up with his verbal assaults, although having run into a wall on that, they are reduced to Georges' pathetic, but fairly effective, efforts to stonewall.

"Bon, Georges, je dirais que cela dépend de vous. Il n'y a qu'une réponse qui satisferait et c'est à vous de l'assurer par tous vos moyens. Et pour cela, vous auriez jusqu'à la fin du mois de mars et pas un jour plus, alors dépêchez-vous de vous organizer pour pourvoir le faire si non, il reste l'appui juridique." Basically, I told him that there is only one acceptable response, and that is "yes, we will get it done" and that for the end of March, or they will face a lawsuit.

"Mais, Madame Sisyphe, "un procès ne sert à rien."

"Oh mais si, Georges," a lawsuit certainly can be useful. "De vous servir un procès serait fort regrettable, mais c'est le dernier recours et nous n'hésiterons pas de vous amener au parquet si vous ne nous donniez pas satisfaction. C'est à vous de jouer." No. More. Ms. Nice. Woman. Not even noticing that I had lost weight, despite my winter coat and huge scarf (I guess I really did lose some weight), can get them out of a lawsuit if they don't start immediately and finish for the end of March. Two conditions.

He extended his hand, not at all convincingly, "Je vous appele."

"Quand?" He looked a little off-balance.

"Cet après-midi, demain -- j'en parle avec Joachim, et je vous appele."

I accepted his hand, but I also knew that shake had just sealed the start of a lawsuit.
....

Granny eye for the queer guy?

What the floating floor covered

How miserable am I? Let me count the ways.

Can we talk about Marseilles getting their cleats handed to them by Lens in the 16e de finale of the Coupe de France instead?

Alright.

So, there were no pleasant surprises. What there is is so bad that I might get my way in an entirely unexpected way, but in such a way that I don't even want to contemplate.

Before leaving for 36 hours at the hospital, Audouin came to see what I'd done in his previous 13 hours' absence. You've all seen that by now, too. He looked around at this room in which he had previously labored to lay down a floating floor on the carpeting and to install 13 mm wallboard on the visible walls. I don't like undoing peoples' work, especially not when I am married to him.

"Je vais balancer les boiseries," I declared, leaving not the least space for argument.

"Ah bon?"

"Ce n'est pas la peine de les garder. Elles sont en très mauvais état," I touched one area where the swinging foot of someone seated at the computer in the unfinished storage system cum computer work station had knocked it in.

"Mais, on peut garder la structure peut-être?" he asked, hopefully. I shook my head.

"C'est pas la peine. Ce n'est même pas une vraie boiserie. C'est une sorte de système préfabriqué." I shuddered for extra effect.

"Mais le parquet, peut-être tu pourrais l'enlever sans le casser? C'était un parquet de haute gamme, pour un parquet flottant. On pourrait, peut-être le vendre à quelqu'un," he added, somewhat hesitantly. I looked at him. I felt some pity. "Même si tu n'as pas l'aire très convancu." He had given up, and right there, I decided to do my level best to take it out without destroying it. Not that I was promising anything.

Not that he was asking for a promise.

After having every blocked muscle released in the sort of pain for which you normally have an epidural by my trainer this morning, while I did my best tantric breathing (aka Lamaze deep breathing). I went at it, removing baseboard glued to the wall board the plastic raceway for wiring I discovered all along three of the walls (were the former owners really in an international drug trade and not fabric importers as they claimed?) and prying loose the fake wainscoting to be able to start yanking up the parquet flottant (without damaging it).

It didn't take me long to discover that this was not going to be possible, but given how many other devastating (but not terribly surprising) things I was uncovering, such as the saltpeter in the plaster walls, the crumbling of the wallboard behind his baseboards, and the fact that the only thing under the carpet underlay was a sort of scratch coat on the concrete subfloor, which left no clearance for the installation of a real solid oak floor, well, this suddenly wasn't such a big deal.

Besides, I was doing the hard, dirty and very unappealing work, while he had all the glory, delivering a 170 kg woman's baby by planned c-section. Imagine, me plus another 110 kg of fat. Oh, and 3 of 4 kg for the baby.

Taking stock, several things were clear: the wallboard would have to be replaced with floor to ceiling wallboard, preferably of the type that includes insulation on the two exterior walls, which meant the door to the under-the-stair closet goes; wood would have to be ordered for real wainscoting; and, I would likely have to settle for an engineered oak floor, glued to the existing scratch coat on the slab, leveled out.

Then, I attacked the middle section, hacking away at the carpeting with a box cutter, and found -- a hole at the exterior wall. I put my hand on the floor and it felt cold and -- damp.

My God! Was the slab humid? This would be project ending. Almost. You cannot put a wood floor down on anything containing humidity, not without a sheet of EPDM, anyway. I reached my hand down into the small space, and I felt two things: a draft of air, and crumbly concrete not more than 4" down.

My God.

Was there nothing but a rat slab under the newer part of the house? That would certainly explain the very large cracks in the wall, if two floors were set on nothing more than 4" of crappy concrete.

Les salauds.

I called my brother-in-law, who got his lawyer friend to write a very scary letter to our workers that I only had to mention to get their attention -- they will be here Friday --, to tell my tale of woe, and let him know the mere threat of the letter and legal action had been extremely effective. Here, we had building professionals working on a house, and they had neither impregnated the walls with the miracle product that is supposed to keep them from taking water up from the ground, nor discovered that something is letting water in under a wall they have covered with chaux aerienne, although they did discover that there is a hole in the sewer line leading from the toilet to the sewer, which means our "po-pos" travel just under the roots of the amaryllis I planted along that wall.

I believe "discover" might have meant "made".

After -- oh -- and hour or so on the phone, I felt better. Better enough to answer my husband's question, "Alors, qu'est-ce que tu as fait de ta journée aujourd'hui," when he called a little later, asked in the very nicest way possible.

I told him everything. No holds barred.

"Peut-être on peut faire couler une nouvelle dalle?" he asked, hopefully. I never, ever thought he would suggest that, and just what I had been thinking, too.

In other words, dig out the existing floor and prepare the ground underneath to receive a decent concrete slab under the house. This is called "underpinning" (when it is really done right and actually involves a foundation, if a house actually has one, or at least a haunched slab), and it's a lot of work. Ideally, it would continue under the walls to provide them some additional support, but I am not about to tear up more than the part under the petit salon, which doesn't give us that much benefit.

It would let us take it deeper so that we could put down waterproofing and a proper subfloor, and get the wood to align (plus ou moins) with the terracotta tiles in the entry.

We shall see. Tomorrow, more destruction, and maybe my Flamant paint. Let us hope, because then I can clean up that room and move the sofa out there and tear out the rest of the floor. Oh, and draw up the plans for the woodwork and make a list of materials to buy.

Mental note: call local masons, as well as the electrician (again).

Friday, the workers.

God help me.

But this carpeting. Seriously. Can we talk about this carpeting? The previous owners of this house were a gay couple who had a business they ran from the house importing fabric from Turkey, among other places, but no one would ever, ever have asked them to host "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy", ever. I knew what this carpeting looked like because it was still visible under the storage system and in the little closet under the stairs, but I had never given serious thought to the fact that they installed it, or, nearly as unbelievable, did not replace it while they lived here. They installed their plastic raceway, and perhaps the fake wainscoting, and they were content? Is that possible?

Well, if you look at the plumbing fixtures and tile they installed in the bathroom...


....

Enough messing around

Flamant paints

We won't discuss the weekend's color failure. Let's just say that I primed the room -- part of it -- for the third time after a color disaster. Worse than the Crystal experience, depending on your taste, but if you think you might feel oppressed looking at army green (the pot color sample didn't look like that) all day, then you can imagine.

I shudder.

This was the product of my husband's tenderly accompanying me to the store to look at other color options.

"Est-ce que tu viens dans le but de garder un oeil sur moi?" I asked, somewhat suspicious of his motives.

"Mais non! Mais si c'est comme ça que tu le vois, peut-être je ferais mieux de rester."

"Non, non. C'est bon." He was just being nice, after all.

"Mais si tu préfères que je reste --"

"Non, non. C'est bon." I threw the car into reverse, backed up along the street side of the house to back into the old parking space and head off to Leroy Merlin, where we spent nearly an hour and a half considering various paint colors. He was being especially considerate and pleasant, trying to accompany me on another of my paint color odysseys. We ended up bringing home practically exactly the one I thought I wanted in the first place, but returned to the store at the beginning of this project, about a month ago. A sign to him that it must be right. A sign to me that I was lost.

There was a reason why.

The time had come to acknowledge that it was time to stop going to the local Leroy Merlin store and to open my horizons. Just because it's Dulux Valentine's top of the line product, Architecte, in a range of carefully chosen and controlled colors, doesn't mean that I am going to find my bonheur.

Pas de tout.

I went and hunted out my 36 euro fold-out of Flamant's color chips in their line of 147 "authentic" colors. Here is contentment. Here is my bonheur.

Flamant makes paints that are intended to be applied by brush. Serious. They sell the special brushes in sizes up to 5" at some 25 euros, too, and I will soon own one of these. The paint has the quality of old chalk or lime paints, but they can be washed. You can apply it with a roller, but I am going to give the brush a try.

We already know I am a glutton for punishment, and a failed perfectionist (the very worst kind to be, or maybe the only kind, actually).

I am Sysiphe. I can apply paint by 5" brush strokes.

I also got out my favorite poster. It hung in my bedroom in Greenwich (or leaned against a wall; I don't think I could ever bring myself to stick a picture hanger in my beautifully painted wall), and it made the trip across the ocean in the container. Insane for a poster bought at IKEA in Elizabeth, New Jersey (yes, Sisyphe has been to New Jersery, many times, in fact, and most of those trips had nothing to do with large Swedish bog box stores), but I liked it. It made me happy. For a long time, it sat in front of the radiator next to the dining table. Then, my husband grew tired of banging his feet into it, and I saw that it had gotten some water damage, so I scarcely protested when he retired it to face the wall in the junk room, otherwise known as the petit salon.

I lay it on the couch and wiped off the spider remains and dust. I looked at the colors: beiges, pale ochers, grays on a light cream background. It is fragments of print in different languages and symbols, and I used to be able to look at it for a long time. The color was in here. Or, the key to the color was in here. I took it, the Flamant color chip fold-out, my coffee and a camera out to my future office and leaned the poster and color chips up against the only wall that won't change color. I had already given it far too much thought before leaving the dimness of the living room. I gave it too much more thought. I held the color chip fold-out against this wall and that wall, near the off-white wall and the dark wood of the windows, the sisal flooring and the orange of the adjoining guest room, separated by a bath done in wood, like a sauna.

Here is the question I was asking myself: should the walls be a color, like the ocher-beige in the poster, glowing when lit like the orange room, or should the walls be a background that suits the colors like those in the poster in which I could decorate the room? I wanted both. Which did I want more?

We'll skip the interior dialog. I decided on the latter at the expense of the effect of the former. It's a feeling thing. This room I want to be more neutral, quieter. I want the things that I put in it and on its walls to be more important than the color of the room. I want it to feel bigger and airier. I went with Abaca. It's on the page with the yellows, so it has more warmth than another color on the whites, Ficelle, that was similar in tone, in the oatmeal family. I could have ordered largish samples to stick to the walls, or very small pots of each, but I am impatient.

And, I have had enough.



Audouin has begun taking down the storage system in the petit salon, which he labored to build according to his ex's directions and never finished, and where the sofa we bought second-hand from a couple of guys in Paris will go. It's black and simple. It will face the piano. Yesterday afternoon, he was watching television instead of working.

"Tu ne veux pas continuer à démonter le rangement dans le petit salon?" I was trying for my least accusatory tone of voice.

"J'ai un problème."

"Oui?"

"Je ne sais pas où mettre tout ce qu'il y a sur les étagères," he said. Where to put everything that is still on the shelves, after everything else that I packed in boxes to deal with later, is indeed a problem, but not one that can be solved by watching TV.

"Par terre?" The floor was the only thing that came to mind. I know who is going to figure out where to put it all, and now that I have ordered my paint on-line, I know who is going to have the time to do it while she waits for her paint, but beware: I throw things that can't find a home away. I headed upstairs and heard the sound of screws being unscrewed begin again in the petit salon.

I also need to make drawings for the woodwork and maybe some built-in shelving, where we can wedge it into this little space, filled with a big couch and a piano.

We were supposed to go pick up 12 m2 of solid oak flooring I had bought on eBay, but the guy turned out to be crazy and refused to figure out how to use his PayPal account to get the money I paid him. After listening to his temper tantrum on the phone, and using my most calming voice to keep him from going completely berzerk, I ended up having to do what he wanted, and started a claims process against him to get my money back.

Whatever.

There is someone else in Versailles who might be willing to break in half a lot of old oak flooring he is selling. I'll know this weekend. I'd have loved to have it for this weekend.

Anyone have any experience installing flooring? I'm about to cut my teeth.
....

I hate the color

The light blue, by daylight

Do you remember my waxing lyric about the color (Crystal) I had chosen for the other room out in the petite maison? Something to do with it being a complementary color for orange and yellow ocher, the colors of the other room and the house as seen from the French doors? Something else about it being like the color of twilight and something about snow-capped mountains?

Well, not that it isn't a nice color (it is), but twilight is better outside. So are snow-capped mountains.

The first brush strokes cutting-in left me a little cold.

It's always that way. You know that. Keep going and see once the wall is all painted. It always looks better then.

"OK," I said to myself, and pressed on, moving onto the walls with the very most cutting-in possible equals time eventually wasted in the event that I still didn't like it, but I was getting tired and not thinking beyond, "Finish... finish... finish... you can finish tonight... it looks like my favorite color when I was little, sort of a cross between periwinkle and cornflower blue from the box of Crayolas... remember how wonderful it was to open a new box of crayons?"

Yeah. And then sharpening them. Remember how you won that coloring contest when you were like, what? Five? And they disqualified you because you didn't go out of the lines once and they didn't believe you did it yourself? The use of color might have been a little maturely subtle, too.

"Yeah. I think Mom told them off, but they refused to change their minds. I decided that meant I'd really won, and probably would have with the older kids, too."

And your bathing suit. The one with the daisies. Where were they? At the hip? It was the sort of the same color. How old were you then?

"Something like that. Maybe it was the shoulder. I loved that bathing suit. Mom said it was 'my color'. I don't know, maybe 6? I can't remember if that one was before the navy blue one with red trim, but I do remember the red and white striped one I had when I made a BM in it by accident and Grandma had to change me. Where on earth were we that day? I was 2, and I was so embarrassed by what I had done."

Amazing the things we remember. It's OK. Kids do that.

"No shit." We laughed riotously together, myself and I.

You know, those edges of plaster that stay white along the edge of blue, I'm remembering something else --

"The plaster hand mold from kindergarden. It looks exactly like that plaster hand mold from kindergarden. I used the 'boy' color. I don't know if I can be happy in a room that looks just like the plaster hand mold I made in kindergarden, only very slightly more gray-violet."

"Salut. Comment ça va?" My husband was home and joining the conversation.

"Ca va, mais je ne sais pas --" He was waiting for something to be wrong; there was plenty of that, but the color was on my mind. "Je ne sais pas si j'aime cette couleur finalement."

"Quelle couleur?", he started to ask. I shot him a withering look. He looked around him, "Oh. Je n'avais pas vu. Bon, c'est pas si mal. Peut-être ça peut-être un peu plus marqué." He could see that it should have more punch. Myself joined me in nodding in agreement with him.

"Faut voir par la lumière de jour, je suppose, mais je ne sais pas," I shrugged and looked back at the powdery blue that would look a lot better on a VW Bug. "Je peux toujours la changer." Not that I wanted to paint the blue walls again.

I wanted to be done.

Now, I have seen by the light of day, and this isn't working for me, only I can't make up my mind. Maybe I'll just paint the whole thing Marble for now, the sneaker and sailcloth color of the big wall and ceiling, and make up my mind later, when I have my mind.


....

Throwing in the trowel

Plaster's still life
And the plaster's still alive.

You cannot imagine how long I have been waiting to be able to use that line. Throwing in the trowel. As in, "That'll do, Sispyhe. That'll do. Time to throw in the trowel."

[Sispyhe beams up at her Farmer, who looks back upon her with satisfaction in a job well enough done.]

I can barely type, that's how much the right side of my neck and shoulder blade hurt, but that won't stop me from trading in my trowels for my brushes and lugging the giant pot of universal primer down from our bedroom, where I left off painting the last time with our French door, and out to the soon-to-be Crystal Room. What shall we call Crystal (the name of the paint color)? It's a very, very light blue with a tinge of violet, like twilight.

I also considered Jungle Green (not yet ruled out) and a very strong free-range hen egg yolk yellow, but this color spoke to me. It is peaceful and serene, clear and delicate like first and last light on mountaintop snow and glaciers.

The French door. Remind me to tell that story, too.


....

One more thought

Or, they are trying to clean the latrine.
....

Further Mouse droppings musings

I thought about it some more.

The styrofoam pellets are actually the insulation whoever built this travesty used inside the concrete blocks.

The plastic tubing is not that at all. There is a small gray tube that runs through the equally gray concrete block to thread the wires to the outlets. The outlets are lined with a red plastic cup that actually seals the space off from the cavity of the concrete block.

In the case of this particular outlet, the back of the red plastic cup has been chewed away. Because it is not there, the insulation and the pellet poohs are free to pass into the outlet area and drop onto the floor.

Clearly, the mice are trying to escape.

This is the only escape route they have tried to date.
....

Outlet outhouse

Mouse merde

Sometimes there are just no words. I can feel the enthusiasm for my home and visiting me here dropping off like, well, mouse droppings.

This makes one mystery sort of explained of about a million.

Some nights, when I was particularly aggravated and aggrieved by my husband (oui, hélas, ça arrive), I would sleep out in the guest room, which was, at that time, in this room. I have since slept in the orange room and enjoyed that, too (much more). After vacuuming the largest of the spiders and and checking for them in my bedding, I'd turn on the bedside light and sink into the down quilt and soft mattress, pillows piled against the wall, and complain in my journal before cracking open the book I'd chosen to lull me to sleep, waiting for the familiar sound of something alive in the wall.

"Scritch... scritch... scritchscritchscritch...," and so it would go. The game was to put off the moment I turned the bedside light back on to make absolutely sure it was actually inside the wall.

And not just behind my pillows.

Now, when guests arrive and I take them through their painstakingly prepared room, pointing out the fresh towels, the clean spa terry robe for their personal use and comfort, and how to work the plethora of light switches, I'd also be sure to add an offhand warning about the sounds of animal life in the walls late at night. An extra winning smile would usually do it to throw them off just enough that all the appalled guest could manage was a brave smile and "Oh! You needn't worry about me! I sleep like a log!"

Kind guest, but I know the truth.

And now, I really do know the truth. When I pulled the outlet cover away from the wall, I noticed what appeared to be pellets of styrofoam spilling out onto the floor. It could not, however, be missed that there were also some suspicious dark pellets mixed in.

Oh, don't think I only noticed this today. No. I noticed this days ago. I just didn't say anything while I considered the implications. But, just now, I poked at the cover plate a bit with my trowel, wiggling it vigorously, as piles of pellets of styrofoam and of mouse turd poured forth, making a nice large, gross pile on the plastic floor covering. Dégueulasse.

Where, I had been asking myself, was this coming from? Was the mouse (or mice) using the outlet as an outhouse? If so, why? Why there, specifically? Why not anywhere?

Watching the turd flow, it struck me. The wall is solid. It is made of concrete blocks covered on the inside in nothing more than plaster (more on that in a bit). Mice cannot run around inside it just as they please like they could were it made of two by fours and sheetrock. No. There is forcémment a plastic tube snaking through the concrete block for the wires, and it is this particular plastic tube that has been serving as a highspeed rodent network. Given that there are several outlets, each with its own wiring, there are certainly several plastic tubes.

Conclusion: Mice do not like to relieve themselves just anywhere, they prefer to choose one place for that purpose and keep their mouse house tidy.

I suppose, if you want to look at it that way, that this is actually good news. They can't get out onto your pillow.

Now, I need to get the vacuum cleaner and see just how much crap there is in there. Ugh.

Remind me to tell you about the other miserable discovery that shouldn't have been one were I not trying not to see the obvious.
....

Needles, knives and electrodes, or a lovely day in June

Bandaged toe and flowers

It hurts.

It didn't hurt last time. At least I thought it didn't. I went shopping at IKEA the next day, or a couple days later, and limped a bit, but that was about all. I was almost disappointed. There is a status of sorts that comes with pain, and I had been gypped. I came home from the hospital and lay on the couch, trying to feel like an invalid. It was the perfect opportunity to lay on the couch for hours, not feel guilty about it and, what's more, get all kinds of appropriate attention.

I didn't need it. Today, I think I do, and I'm not giving in to pain: I'm working on the green guest room. The one that will be green -- like the orange one is orange, with one 1960's era white sneaker color rear wall -- and be more of a family room, or a place to send the family when I finally get a new couch for show and visitors. It will be cactus green. It has gray in it, and it feels cool and mossy.

I'd really like to lie down on the couch and watch Wimbledon all afternoon (it's green, too), but I have to return to the hospital for an electromyogram (EMG). This is another opportunity to have needles stuck into me. It's a test for carpal tunnel syndrome, which we know I have because we did this 6 years ago. It showed, according to le docteur Ille, chief of staff of neurology at the hospital (and a really nice guy), that I had pronounced carpal tunnel syndrome in both hands, only I never got it operated on for various reasons. Having had enough of the pain and handicap, I have decided that the moment has come to do something about it, and we're doing the test again. Also according to le docteur Ille, carpal tunnel left untreated can cause paralysis in the muscles of the thumb, which might explain some things. My opposables have been far too agreeable.

He will attach electrodes to various points on my arms and then prick my hands here and there with needles, asking me to make a fist. He'll watch for the electrical impulse that indicates nerve activity and whether there is delay. The greater the delay, the worse the carpal tunnel. Oddly, the test showed that it is more pronounced in my left hand. I am right-handed.

I think the shots of local anesthetic were more painful, though (getting them in the second toe is no picnic), and I can concentrate on the pain in my toe rather than the pain in my hands while he is sticking me with the needle.

Back to work a few more minutes on the guest/family room. I'm vacuuming the spiders and their webs. It's horrible. I have to harden myself to do that. The poor things are only trying to live, although they cause anguish to many of our house-guests, who are actually afraid of them.

Pst. Listen, I have a secret for you.

I have to tell you in the interest of honesty and disclosure that we have spiders here in the country. Yes. Really. They are mostly harmless. Daddy Longlegs and such. They eat the mosquitos. I don't feel as badly ridding us of the large hairy ones with thick legs, the ones that resemble nothing more than me, the ones that really make our guests scream, but, even then, we usually use a glass and a piece of paper and put them outdoors.

The problem?

They come back inside.


....

There's no sunshine when he's gone

June rain falls again

It's Monday morning and the sun didn't come back out, and it's only to work to which he's gone.

We start to get very worried every day there is no sunshine; not that rain isn't necessary, it's just that for the last few years, when the sun goes away, it tends to stay away, for whole weeks at a time during the summer.

Nothing is as beautiful without sunshine. There is no magical, delightful, intoxicating (it is) play of light in the leaves and the petals of the flowers to make the colors vibrant. They are just green and purple. Or green and orange. Colors waiting for life. Whole flowers bloom and die without ever being beautiful. Whole seasons of flowers bloom and fade away without even being seen from behind the walls and the closed windows. The birds don't sing. So, on a day like today, when the sun is gradually covered by uniformly ash-gray clouds, like an old camp fire exhausted, we begin to worry that this is the day that the gray, cold and wet summer begins again.

And my "to do" list is long and discouraging.

There is the pool, which needs more vacuuming and chemicals, now that the electricity is restored to the pump. It also means that we are about to be solicited, heavily. Watching the sheets of algae disappear into the vacuum yesterday, my husband glanced over to the neighbor's lower garden, just behind the wall along our hydrangea bed behind the diving board.

"Ca ne va pas passer inaperçu très longtemps. Je pense parfois qu'il serait bien d'installer un film vert." He sighed. It took me a second to get it. A green film we can pull over the surface of the pool to make it look like we just never have been able to get the pump going to keep the neighbors at bay. I laughed.

"Elles montent sur le toit de leur cabane afin de mieux guetter la piscine. J'ai même trouvé des bouts de bois tombés dans les hydrangeas. Ca ne me surprendrait pas d'apprendre qu'elles s'en servent du pont pour rentrer du toit dans notre jardin, et qu'elles viennent dans la piscine quand nous ne sommes pas là." It has been disturbing to find lengths of wood, supported on the one end by their cabin's roof, and on the other by the top of our garden wall, looking every bit the bridge to our pool.

It starts about now, the gate bell sounding every sunny day around 5:25 pm. Sounding until I answer, even if it is an inconvenience, regardless of what I am doing -- which can't be called work (it seems) unless I am actually paid for it -- and as difficult as it is to say to an 8-year-old that no, it is not possible to come and play in the pool this afternoon, I am forced to do it, over and over again because the message "wait for an invitation" doesn't penetrate. Hope dies hard in the breast of school-aged children. They have even showed up at the gate in their bathing suits, towels in hand, all ready.

"Bonjour!" they say to me, "Est-ce qu'on peut venir dans la piscine?"

I raise my eyes to the windows of the house across the street and wonder if their mother knows they have arrived, all ready to go in the pool. I think she does. I have hinted, and she merely smiles. I think of our neighbor across the street and up the hill a long time ago when we were growing up, our babysitter's mother. We knew that their pool was strictly invitation only, and that the invitations, no matter how hot and muggy it got in the Syracuse summer, would not come. Under no circumstances did you ask. You did not even talk about the pool, in which their mother, our high school gym teacher and coach, did her laps. Two miles a day. We had been invited once, years before, when we were very young. Perhaps our reluctance to indicate any interest in the pool, out of a sense of propriety, enforced by our mother, canceled the hope of an invitation by showing us to be uninterested. Better that than risk forcing an invitation, we consoled ourselves, or soliciting pity.

Besides, I wore my jeans on the hottest and closest of days, sure that my body was far better off covered than exposed in a bathing suit. I nearly passed out on those days, working as a camp counselor for Parks and Rec, on the long walk to and from my old elementary school and the afternoons spent on the playing fields and the tar of the old tennis court the school hosed down to turn into a skating rink in the equally extreme winters, when the expression of humidity turned from mugginess and thunderstorms to freeze and blizzards from Canada, across the great weather amplifiers known as the Great Lakes.

The bell rang the other day. It rang and rang. I heard the gate open -- they don't always wait for a response -- and dashed into the house. I think I was seen. I saw a movement of white by the ragged corner tree, and I felt like a fugitive in my own home and garden. I felt, in short, like a coward and a fool (not the worst I have felt these past couple weeks). I returned to face my fate, grabbing my camera on the way back outside to take more pictures of the magnificently large green-headed frog, who had just turned his back to the afternoon sun where it sat on the mound of moss I saved from the old basin. I nearly offered him (or her) some sunblock. I squatted as close as the edge of the fish-pond-in-a-fountain would let me get to it, facing the gate, and the bell rung again.

I raised my head and a finger, placing it before my lips to indicate silence and then wagging it in the air before me, the silent "No, not now." I pointed to the frog she could not see on the mound of moss hidden from her view. She did not leave. I continued to try to get a picture of the frog's smile, straight across its wide, white throat, beating in time to its heart. Sam came down to head to Thai boxing, and went out through the gate. Later, when he came home, he said, "You know, Mom, she was still there, sitting by the gate when I left."

There is a deep and abiding interest in our pool. No wait is too long if there is hope yet of a desire satisfied.

"Oui, mais elle t'apprécie vraiment bien aussi," his stepfather -- my husband -- chimed in helpfully. And the fact that she does like me makes it even that much worse, because I like her, too. I just can't be the parks and recreation counselor for the village.

"Je sais, mais je ne peux pas les avoir tout le temps dans la piscine. Je ne suis pas le maître nageur du village, tu sais," I whined, sighing.

"Je sais."

Resist and feel badly. Give in with good grace and feel almost as badly for not being able to make the rules and get everyone to live by them. There's no point; they won't, and it's June, and I will hear Je m'ennuie every day when the bus rolls up to the house and lets the kids off. A green film sounds pretty good.

"Et oui. La pompe ne marche pas. On ne comprend rien! Chaque année c'est une chose ou une autre, et la piscine ne marche jamais," I said, laughing, imagining us swimming silently in the clear water after dark, making everyone believe that the pump just never did start working properly, leaving the water too green and murky to go in.

Then, there are the additional plants I bought for the containers, being watered by the falling rain.

The details I need to draw for the new entry to the kitchen -- the workers are supposed to be back in 2 or 3 weeks --, the details for a toit végétal for the petite maison, and a garage sort of thing that can pass the mairie's review for a structure for which they can close their eyes and give us the go-ahead on land that is considered a flood zone and on which no structures can be constructed.

There is the other guest room, the one I will paint green.

The sea grass floor-covering for the two rooms, about which I need to make a final decision. Do it or not? The installer called, certainly wondering what happened to our rush job for my half-sister's arrival, and how that went. His wife of 30 years, he had told me, has been trying to find her own half-French and half-English half-siblings. That being half the reason, if not the entire reason, for which I am now slogging through my days, on half-power. Only the sun and my husband help, and when he is gone, even if only to work, there is no sunshine. Si je te prends dans mes bras, tu arrêtras de pleurer? he asks, with tenderness.

I can't promise.

Que dois-je faire pour que la douleur du passé passe? Je ne peux pas exciser cette partie de moi-même sans me faire plus de mal encore.

C'est le deuil qui fait le travail, he says. He is right. I know he is right.

I worked on that room, thinking of my father, imagining that he could he could see me and that he knew that I was making it for her arrival, shopping with care at IKEA for the little things that would make it more than clean, that would make it comfortable and welcoming. It was already incredible that she would be here in only days, only hours. It was incredible that she would be here at all, after 32 years, and the more incredible a thing, perhaps, the more it shouldn't be invited. Je suis convaincu que ça va t'aider à long terme même si cela t'a fait mal dans le présent.

I am still in the present, and I suppose that I am not the only one.

You were wrong. You always thought our father was weak, but it wasn't my mother who didn't want you at his funeral. It was his wish from his death bed.

The measure of pain felt can be taken in that inflicted. It's hard to think about the long term when every internal wound is opened and bleeding at once now, and loss and abandonment feels like the deepest, coldest water in which you have ever swum, leaving you heavy and senseless, the shores indistinct.

Do what you are going to do, and I will tell.

Tell me what you have done, and tell me you are sorry.

It wasn't enough to explain what was wrong with my father. What could a 16-year-old have done that was enough to merit that?

It's different in my case, said my son.

It is different. His father told me as soon as he learned I was pregnant for our child that he could not be a father. My father was my "Dad" until he decided -- or accepted -- not to be. There are many circumstances under which to not be a father in the face of being or becoming one. We will both have lived without fathers, in very different circumstances, and circumstances, like everything else in life, can change. Often, they must, and we must help one another as they do.

Tell me what you have done, and tell me you are sorry.

We cannot love and understand our father the same way, ever. We can only accept one another's right to her feelings and to the truth of her life. If we cannot accept that, we cannot be sisters, ever. We might not be able to accept that, ever. We haven't been able to now.

I thought I could. I learned that I couldn't. I am not wise. I only try to tell the truth, even when I oughtn't. I don't know better. All I want is the truth. I am not ready to save others from the pain I have felt. My father left me when I was old enough to know, and I did not deserve that; no child could.

That is the truth.

I will try tell you what I have done, and to be sorry.
....

The orange room, furnished

Time to finish vacuuming and do the dinner dishes, then go to bed. Airport in the morning.

At least there's a room ready.

And 6 bistro chairs around the Moroccan mosaic table on the terrace. Ready for petit déj on sunny mornings.
....

Praise with elation

Morning has broken, beautiful

finally

And, I have nearly finished with a guest room suitable to receive a visitor. My half-sister. My father's last child. Another story I haven't told because it's one that might not stop. I haven't seen her since the day her mother asked my father to have us come for the afternoon and dinner to tell us that there would be nothing for us, my sister and I, my father's first children. We never saw him again, not on purpose. I saw him once more across a crowded Greyhound station in Syracuse, NY about a year later. I wasn't sure it was him. He looked so much older. "Dad?" I called, not very loudly. I didn't want to be wrong in front of all those people. He didn't hear. I continued to walk towards him, carefully, and called a little louder, "Dad?" He heard. His head made a sudden movement toward me, his eyes looking at the faces around him.

"Dad." They found me.

"Jackie?" He looked uncertain. I nodded. Yes, it's I. He walked over to me. Did he hug me? I don't know. "What are you doing here?"

"I just got back from visiting my cousin Kathy at North Adams. Mom's waiting for me out in the car." He nodded. We said good-bye, and I never saw him again. I called from college over the years, but he was detached. Drifting like a space lab with a broken arm. I wanted him to talk; I wanted him to sound proud of me. Once, he told me that he had been in NYC with his wife, to see the doctors at Columbia Presbyterian. She had already seen the best neurologists in Syracuse, but she wanted a physical cause for her searing headaches, not a suggestion that she see a therapist when they found none. She asked for the best, and they referred her to Columbia.

"Why," I asked him from my dorm room, "didn't you call me? It's only a couple of miles from me." I knew the answer. I wanted only to ask the question. I had to ask. He didn't answer. He told me about the doctors in Syracuse, the doctors in NYC, the pain.

"They found nothing," he said. "They suggested she see a therapist, too, for possible emotional causes. She refused." I listened. "They said the only way to make the pain go away is to cut the nerves to the left side of her face, which would leave her paralyzed, like a stroke victim. That, or try seeing a therapist."

"So, what is she going to do?" I knew the answer.

"She asked for the surgery." He sounded flat. Worn out. Disbelieving. He didn't get it, but he couldn't decide for her.

There were so many things I ought to have said rather than leave his bubble intact. I didn't know. You can't change a man. Remember, that, Jackie. You can't ever change a man. My mother had told me that so many times, not that she ever stopped trying herself. It's hard, I suppose, not to want to try. I let my dad be. I think I was wrong now. There are things one should say if the other can't.

I called him the last time in the early summer of 1983, 4 years after I saw him for the last time in the Greyhound waiting room, when he didn't try to talk to me longer. Didn't offer me a Coke or offer to tell me why he was there himself. Didn't come out to see my mom and tell her he'd bring me home, that he'd call and come to get me soon to spend some time together. He let me go.

I called to ask him to sign the adoption papers.

"I always knew," he said, sounding empty, "that I would never see you or your sister again." Why? "I passed out in the kitchen the other day."

"What did the doctor say?" He hesitated.

"You did see a doctor, didn't you?"

"I --," he stopped.

"You didn't see a doctor?"

"No. It doesn't matter. I am going to die soon anyway." He let me go, and he was killing himself. Three packs of unfiltered Pall Malls a day for 30 years should do it. Eventually. There were things I should have asked, but, I must have thought, Why? He had made a choice. He made it the day his wife put her hands on his shoulders from behind his easy chair in their split-level ranch and said, "Bob, you have something to say to your daughters, don't you?" and he turned white. As white as his shirt. He looked trapped.

"Bob, you had something to say to them, didn't you? she prompted again. He continued to look at us on the sofa with the comics spread on our knees, our half-sister playing on the floor between us, his wife's daughter looking on, and no sound came from him. He was frozen.

"Well, then, girls, the reason we called you here today is to tell you that there will be nothing from us for school, or anything." She had dared to say it. Dared to say what my father couldn't, and she knew he couldn't. We listened, quietly. Me, 16. My sister 3 years younger. I nodded politely. Our father sat perfectly still, perfectly white. She couldn't see what we saw from where she stood behind him, her hands resting on his shoulders. He didn't love her. He wasn't anymore. If he were to love her, then he had to become another man, one who couldn't know us. "Dinner's ready. Come to the table," she finished. We stood up, and we walked to the table. I didn't ask him to drive us home. Right now. I was polite.

Always polite.

He sat at the head of the table on my right, facing his wife, my sister on my left, facing, our step-sister, our four-year-old half-sister to her left. At dessert, our stepmother said to her older daughter, a year younger than I, "Why don't you go upstairs and get all the nice clothes your dad bought for you to show the girls?" I looked at my father. He was paler still. Absolutely silent. Where had he gone inside himself? Why, I asked myself, doesn't he stop this? It was a set-up. She had planned it all out. A theater piece to show my sister and I who his children were, and who they were not. We had nothing. I bought my clothes, paid for my lessons -- everything -- with my babysitting and waitressing money, and I was saving for college. He sent nothing. Once, I asked for $20 for track shoes because I wanted to join the high school team. He offered me one of my savings bonds. I thanked him and bought them for myself.

She stood from her place, and went upstairs to return with shoes dripping from her fingers, a pile of blouses, skirts, pants draped across her forearms, as though she were offering them to us. That was it. She didn't show us each one, or how they went together, how many outfits she could make from them and how nice they looked on her.

"It's time to take the girls home now, Bob." He let us go.

That was 32 years ago.

I found my half-sister, Jennifer, in January, and she asked to come here. She looked like me when she was a baby. She looks like our father's mother now.

"Tu vas la reconnaître à l'aéroport?" my husband asked last evening.

"Bien sur. C'est le visage de ma grandmère, comment pourrais-je ne pas la reconnaître?" He smiled.

"Et elle, elle va te reconnaître, tu penses?"

"Je ne sais pas. Elle n'a vu qu'une photo de moi, et pas très récente, à moins que notre soeur lui a montré l'une des siennes. Horribles, d'ailleurs." I am not photogenic. My mother always said so, You're not photogenic. You're telegenic. The problem is that people don't watch me on television, and there are only a handful of photos that actually look like me, or the way I see myself when I look in a mirror, which I don't do often, if I can help it.

"I only ever saw our father cry twice," Jennifer told me. The first time was when our stepsister's father called to say he could adopt his daughter, if he wanted; he didn't want her. The second time was when I called to ask him to sign the adoption papers. "He went outside and dropped onto a lawnchair and sobbed. He wouldn't talk to anyone." He had done what he couldn't believe any father could.

"Don't think," my sister told her, "that she wanted that when she called. Dad could have said no. She wanted Dad to say no." But, he let us go. He replaced us with his wife's children and led the life we had with him, were supposed to continue to have with him, until he died just 6 years later. Longer, I imagine, than he had hoped.

Tomorrow Jennifer will be here, and I will see him again, in the photos she will bring of him and in her face. How do you prepare yourself for that? He taught her to ski moguls, he left me before I was ready. He left off with me, and continued with her. The skiing, the summers in South Wellfleet, the dances at the weddings. He left her with his flag, to cry for his loss. I think that flag will travel here, and Dad will be there, here in the French countryside in Moosesucks with us.

I am left to wonder about his masters in psychology and the love he developed for photography.

"Did he still hunt?" I asked Jennifer?

"Oh, yes! Right up until he died, although in his last years he'd just have soon have taken his camera as his rifle." And my son, who has inherited my need to photograph what I see. From my father? I knew about the obsession with a perfect lawn. He carried, she told me, his dandelion lifter in his back pocket, just in case he came across one. I asked her to bring me one to replace the only one I ever saw here and lost, somewhere in the garden. I probably threw it away with a bunch of dandelions, before I learned that spraying and soil care is a lot easier than bending down to jam the dandelion thing into the ground and pry them out, one by one.

Somehow, he also learned to live while he was letting go of us, and of life. Why didn't he call us? Perhaps the space lab had just drifted too far, the arm grown too broken to reach back out. If he thought to repair it with the tools he sought in psychology, he certainly also thought it was too late, that we wanted things this way, that that is what I had asked for when I called to ask him to sign the papers, when it didn't occur to me to add, "unless you want to be our father," rather than waiting for him to say, "No, I am your father, and I am coming to see you."

I must go and finish preparing her room. I imagine he knows that I am doing that for her, for him, and I can't even count the number of spiders who gave their lives in the effort.

The white door and trim on the orange walls are about to go Meteorite, too. It was my first idea -- a little more "modern", to go with the pared down simplicity (ahem) of the room --, but it was easy to do the white first and see. Audouin says orange, and I have to agree.

Forever orange.

My arms are killing me, right along with my hands and upper back. Audouin looked at me last evening, folding laundry at 11:30 pm and said, "Tu n'as pas arreté toute la journée."

"C'est comme ça depuis 2 semaines." In case he hadn't noticed.

I exaggerate. It's been like that for 2 days, although I have worked pretty hard for all of the last 2 weeks on this room. And I thought I'd get both rooms done on time. I edit constantly while I zip around like the Tasmanian devil through the multitude of things I feel I have to do, prioritizing on the run, the phrase, "Remember ladies, lower your expectations," running through my mind.

Things I have had to decide to live with:

1. It's the smaller room that will be ready.
2. The sea grass floor covering will not be installed because of the various leaks in the bathroom.
3. The house will not be House & Garden quality.
4. The pool is still a swamp because I haven't received the estimate I want from the fourth electrician with the middle price and the cheap one hasn't called as he said he would.
5. The furnace continues to emit foul-smelling smoke, choking and offending us.
6. The garden is not perfectly House & Garden quality, either, but it's not that bad. I've gotten to most of it, and made a Herculean effort -- ha, get it? Sisyphe making a Herculean effort? -- to clean up after the disappeared workers (another story I haven't had time to tell) and weed some more.

Oh! Did I mention the asbestos the roofer found?

I have to get going. IKEA waits for me, I must finish mowing the lawns (sounds grandiose, n'est-ce pas?), and I have the house to vacuum, the chair covers to decatfur, dry cleaning to pick up, and the list goes on.

I should make a list.

I am too tired to make a list.

I don't even want to stand up. It's 11:45, the clouds have gathered, and I meant to have left nearly three hours ago for IKEA. Time to lower my expectations another notch.


....