Cagnes interlude

Winter wisteria

Sunrise left Saturday night. Gina left this morning. The rest of the horses leave tomorrow evening, followed by the last one, Elbow Beach, in another week, or so. Annie flies down and back tomorrow to see her horse run. Agata is taking care of the horses that will stay behind, Chantal will reign over vastly emptied yards home in Maisons-Laffitte, and she and I are left to wait for Gina's business to return in late February. Me? It's time for me to return to my own yards.

I lifted my head and looked around me this morning, and what I saw did not make me happy. Dust. Dirt. Decrepitude. The house and the garden have been left to themselves. They cannot make their own projects happen. I have been left to myself. I have been incapable of making my own projects for them happen. There is only one person who can change that, and it is not in lifting my head and looking around that I will find her.

I have preferred the warm, velvet muzzles of mares in my neck, blowing softly into my ear and nibbling my hair, the smell of oats and Guinness, apples and alfalfa. A pitchfork or branch broom to a rake in my hands. Horses to plans and orders and decisions over how much to spend on what, and how. It is time to put on my own oeillères australiennes and to do my work.

Why is it so hard? I know that when I will have done it, there will be a release, the chance for a relâchement and a relancement, a stretch of time for other things, finally, without guilt, and satisfaction in spades, a heavy, heavy weight off my mind. Sometimes, it seems like procrastination is a sort of protection. But, against what? Everything that comes once the task is done, perhaps? It's not like I have not been busy. I have, but it is not as if these things that have occupied my time amount to my work being done, my home being something of which I can feel proud. My garden, too. How many times have we heard that the state of one's room, one's home is a reflection of the state of one's mind?

This is not good.

Imagine the house is finished. There will still be the housework to do. The dust that comes to lay itself in layers to dépoussiérer. The dirt that fills the corners to s'en débarrasser. The things that will continue to accumulate and not find a home in the still too limited space to ranger. The only solution is to determine the best systems of rangement and to build them. A good word, rangement, with its root rang, or to order or to arrange in nice neat lines, from the old franc work chramne or hramne, qui a ce sens dans la loi salique.

I prefer the sense of "rang" dans "rangement" à celui de "la loi salique".

Homes need their backstages. They need their stagehands, their carpenters, painters and managers. I need a staff; but I am not getting one anytime soon.

I have six weeks, six weeks measured in Cagnes until spring's work in the garden and Gina's return with the horses and the courses beginning in Chantilly and Saint-Cloud, to get my plans done and off to the builder to reserve his time in the clement months to come.
....

Frost on amaryllis bud in January

The natural order of things

Frog in a water lily flower

I see them along the bricks edging the fishpond-in-an-old-fountain, and on the moss mounded on the old stone farm sink. I see them clutching the edges of the water lily leaves, or sitting atop them, but until today, I had never seen one actually sitting inside the flower itself, resting lightly on the yellow pistils and stamens. This is a small frog of great vision and imagination; he sees possibilities where others see only pink.

Many days have passed this year when I have not written, and not even felt tempted to write. I have a short list of probable explanations:

1. Hours spent in the garden working without stop from February 27 through June 1.
2. Various computer malfunctions relating mostly to power supply and motherboard issues.
3. Numerous family dysfunctions relating mostly to inflated expectations in a blended family situation.
4. Hours spent working on my volunteer position as president of a non-profit association that runs a publicly funded daycare center with a social mission.
5. Fear of exposing my private reflections, having taken on a public role, and wondering if the fear is reasonable, or as inflated as my blended family expectations.

And the winner is, fear of exposing my private reflections, having taken on a public role, and wondering if the fear is reasonable, or as inflated as my blended family expectations!

Fear, as they tell you, makes for being stuck, and now that I have begun, I realize there are a million places, almost only places where I live in some level of perpetual fear: fear of another argument about what is really necessary in our home renovation (stuck), fear of another argument about how good is good enough in our home renovation (stuck), fear of spending money when I earn none (stuck), fear of heading out for a jog and finding that my back spasms and I can't suck in enough breath, having been inactive apart from gardening for -- oh -- a year (stuck), fear that I have been a terrible parent and a worse life partner, fear that fear that I have irreparable personality issues, fear that I really have no talent for anything and that I will be caught out, fear that for everything I have learned, I have learned nothing.

The only thing I don't fear is taking on a challenge, like becoming president of an association with an operating budget of 650,000 € and 13 employees, or ordering and installing a new motherboard for my laptop.

My husband would suggest, kindly, that this sounds just a little bit like depression, which is just so depressing (and confusing), really.

"Tu as besoin d'un projet. Le problème c'est que quand tu en as, tu vas à fond, mais quand tu n'en as pas, tu es comme ça." "Ca" meaning depressed. "Ca" meaning untethered and aimless.

"C'est pas vrai," I retort, but it's true. At least it seems true. So, what does it mean?

Projects make you feel like your life has purpose and structure, when they might really be a mask for their total absence. I long for two things. The first is to be able to feel as though I am sitting on a mountain top, or a very high hilltop, anyway, with a clear view out over the surrounding countryside, the countryside being "the meaning and purpose of life". The second is to be Solomon Grundy: Born on a Monday, Christened on Tuesday, Married on Wednesday Took ill on Thursday, Grew worse on Friday, Died on Saturday, Buried on Sunday. That was the end of Solomon Grundy.

I'd settle for the Sesame Street version of his week, too. At least there is order and purpose, activity and diligence, reductionist simplicity in it, even if at the end of the week he's still half dirty.

Anyway, I tell myself that when my computer is functioning properly again, which should be as soon as I install my reconditioned motherboard when it arrives, I will get my drawings for the house ready. We shall see.

That failing, I'd be my frogs. They don't have to feel guilty when they are between projects and doing nothing, or avoiding projects altogether. They can sit in the water lilies.

....

Forces of nature: natural, human and mechanical

Eye contact

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

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

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

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

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

I am sure you are.

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

....

The oak floor

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

Irrevocably late.

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

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

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

"Ah, bon. T'es prête alors?" he asks.

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

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

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

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

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

I hadn't.

"C'est pas vrai."

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

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

Phew.

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

Not phew.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Mais quoi encore?" I asked, exasperated.

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

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

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

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

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

Ha ha ha.

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

And all the building materials await.


....

Black mold, Moosesucks tea

Preparing the blue room for painting

Yeah, I'm still here. I've just been a little busy.

In the midst of a major clean-up of the pool side of the lower lawn, I got it in my head that I needed to paint the guest rooms in the petite maison. Right away. It was like a bad itch.

It wasn't going to be enough to clean thoroughly, having evicted the absent workers' belongings and remnants of their occasional work from them, discarded cigarette packs and unraveling sweaters, sacks of chaux mix and plastic containers of pigment, boxes of screws and packages of sandpaper. The detritus of the work that was supposed to have been finished last November.

No, it was necessary to recover them completely, restore perfect order and make them fresh and sanitary. Of course, one thing leads to another, and now I am dans le proverbial po-po.

I only meant to paint the two rooms. You know, New York City house cleaning. Seal another generation or two of Daddy Long-legs and their webs, along with the balls of dust clinging to the rough "plaster" work, between the wall and the primer (well, yes, I do use primer, actually; it's kind of a high-end NYC cleaning-up-after-the-old-tenant job). That sort of thing. But, they didn't have any primer left at Leroy Merlin. I didn't even have time to ask how that could possibly be -- I mean, how stupid! -- before it occurred to me that it didn't really matter. I had another problem to deal with first. The previous owner -- ahem -- had a fascination with "special effects" paint with lots of texture; I had lissage to do before I got anywhere near a primer coat.

"C'est bien, Madame," dit le conseilleur, "Ca nous donnera le temps de tout mettre en rayon, pour mercredi je dirais." I can, in other words, expect to be able to purchase primer to seal the plaster on Wednesday. I'd hate for them to have to stock their shelves just for me.

I came home with 236 euros of paint, roller, brushes and enduit de lissage and got to work, heading first to the attic for the plastic tubs in which I mix the plaster, only to find a half bag of the mix. It figures, I chided myself, That's what you get for not looking to see what you had before going to the store. Ha! It took all of an hour or so to finish that bag and head for scissors to open the new one, a 5 kg + 1 kg free bag. By then, Audouin had been in and out several times, amused and perplexed by my sudden activity in the Blue Room.

"Tu vas faire les quatre murs?" he asked. Hm. Did he see an option I had missed?

"Oui. Les deux pièces." All four wall, both rooms. He looked around the small room.

"Tu as la cote," he said, taking note of the three animals filling what was left of the space and all available surfaces. I followed his eyes as he pointed their presence out to me, one by one, "Wisp est là, sur la table, et les deux chiennes sont là et là." It was true. They were all there, keeping me company, until they got bored and wandered off a few minutes later. I wasn't going to do anything very interesting, and I needed the heat turned up unreasonably hot to dry the plaster mix on the walls between applications and sanding.

"C'est bien que tu fasses ça," dit-il. "Je n'ai jamais aimé ce mur là." He meant the one I think of as blue, although it is really a watery sort of green with a deep blue paint on the wood trim. That's probably why I think of the room as being blue. "J'étais furieux quand elle a fait ça."

He meant his ex and the very roughly textured stuff she put on the wall and then stained the watery green.

"Je me suis donné un mal de chien pour bien lisser les joints dans le Placoplâtre pour que ça soit parfaitement lisse, et elle a mis ça."

I could feel his pain. I would have needed a drip of morphine. To live with her, too.

"Tu n'aurais pas eu besoin d'être si soigneux si tu l'avais su."

"Elle n'a pas vraiment refléchi au problème."

No, she didn't really think about it, and she made all his work superflu.

"Tu as besoin d'aide?" he asked.

He has no patience for this sort of thing. I declined in the nicest possible way, which is exactly what he was hoping I would do. He smiled, shook his head and went back to the house, while I trowled plaster onto the bumpy walls with great alacrity, satisfaction and zest. Some hours later, as the last light was fading in the evening sky, I had to turn on the overhead light, and I was only 2/3 done with two of the walls in the blue room, I started to wonder if he weren't right.

I am now working on the 15 or so kg bag I picked up at Monsieur Bricolage Sunday morning and off to the store again tomorrow. I'm also thinking that I really, really should have used the plaster mix for filling holes and cracks on that blue-green wall, that's how deep the relief is. You could hurt yourself if you tripped and fell against it wearing anything other than body armor.

Stay focused on the end result. Breathe, only not too deeply nor too rapidly.

Of course, I was ignoring one small thing, which is that I was going to an awful lot of trouble for two rooms that don't merit it. And, the black mold. The leak problem, you know, from the roof covered in flat ceramic tiles which is of far too shallow a pitch to permit anything but a metal roof or -- what I am going to do -- a toiture végetalisée. I have been watching the mold spread for some years now, thinking You're going to have to do something about that, and here I am, painstakingly plastering the walls for the paint, when we're going to have to rip the entire ceiling out once we fix the roof.

One little letter and we could be moving to Beverly Hills. As it is, we'll be going to la Salpêtrière! All puns intended (chemical, historical and anything else you can find).

So, do you think that is enough to stop me? Oh no. I want the rooms painted, and I am going to do that, even if I have to do it all over again.



As for the pool, well, that electric wire? The one that came out the side of the house and ran down the wall and then under the paving of the entry courtyard? The one I had the workers cut? Well, it turns out that it wasn't the one for the gazebo that doesn't work.

It was the one for the pool pump.

We're calling electricians to see who can get here fast, not rip us off and not claim we never said there was no electricity coming from the severed cable. Hey, that will be extra. Meanwhile, the pool is a lovely swamp.

It's always something.

Makes me think of Roseanne Roseanadanna.



"Well it just goes to show you, it's always something, you either got a toenail in your hamburger or toilet paper clinging to your shoe."
....