A concession to Maria

The Tulip tree

It is perfectly quiet. There is only the sound of the logs burning in the wood stove and Rapide's soft snoring to mask the only other possible sound, besides my fingers tap-tap-tapping on the keyboard: Shadow's fireside bath.

Fia is napping in her corner of the kitchen, and the leaves are turning yellow, rust and gold out in the garden, past the French window. I am stuck on the sofa, mostly, having strained the left dorsal lifting a bag of old concrete, sand and dirt that had soaked up too much of the recent heavy rains out in the still unfinished courette d'entrée. My husband had decided that we were at least finally getting rid of the latest impressive crop of plastic bags, filled just to the point where I could still carry them from one end of the uppermost terrace to the other end 20 meters away near the gate, were -- they sat. For a good long moment.

I had other things to do.

It started out a just little pain. The kind of pain that ask that you take but polite, slight notice of it, making a little wince of annoyance when you turn or go to lift the dishes to set the table, which you do because your husband's attention span does not permit him to get further than the place mats, the plates and a couple of glasses before he gets distracted by the television between the verres à pieds and the water glasses for the kids and the silverware.

"On a besoin de couteaux?" he asks when he eventually returns. Every time.

"On a toujours besoin de couteaux," I reply -- every time --, and then he wanders off again to stand in front of the television. Returning, he notes the completed glasses and the silverware.

"Ah! Mais tu l'as fini!," he exclaims with enough étonnement in his voice to convince you he really is still surprised -- every time -- that he has been gone long enough for you to complete the job. "J'allais revenir le finir, tu sais," he adds for good measure.

"Oui," I tell him -- every time--, "je le sais."

It was after lunch when I couldn't move any more. The pain came on progressively as I struggled to bend my knees to pick up light things I could limp over to the car, while he loaded it for the dump runs, expanding to include an ever larger area of the left side of my back until it spasmed, stopping me in the middle of an attempt to rise from the sofa, where I had finally retreated to watch the beginning of the women's Masters tournament. It hurt to gasp in pain.

Maria was maybe a little bit right. I suspected it had really all begun when I was raking the ivy up the flames to get it all to turn to ash the evening before. Rakes are back killers. Not, of course, that I plan on heeding Maria's admonishments. Little enough gets done around here. If I waited for my husband to take his next days off from the hospital, never mind.

"Je sais," said my husband, on a trip through the house. He used to specialize in what the French still call quaintly, I have remarked before in this blog, lumbago, until I got him to start working with my personal trainer, who is a genius. Unfortunately, he is also working at opening his own training center right now, and we're on our own.

Lumbago. It sounds like it should be part of a stew, or a beach dance at Club Med.

He had things to do, however, before he could get to the pharmacie, like take a shower.

"J'ai envie d'une douche," he pronounced in a tone I dared not contradict, despite my pain. "Je me sens sal, et je voudrais prendre une douche avant de partir."

I considered this, and it seemed to me that if I were planning on asking him to be my slave all evening, it might be right to let him have a shower before I started with my requests from the sofa. Besides, I had taught Lamaze. I knew how to breathe through the pain, and a yoga class or two had taught me to breath to the muscle screaming at me.

By the time I had taken two Aleve, rested several hours with the hot compress against my offended muscle and had the muscle relaxing ointment rubbed into it, I was moving around again like an agile and spritely old woman.

"Regards!" I said brightly to my husband, seated at the end of the dining table in front of his solitaire game, his face lit by his computer screen. He looked up and watched me approach, upright (I had earlier taken 5 minutes to cross the living room on elbows and knees, keening like the gypsy women in the Métro with their poor, drugged babies and young children). "J'ai regagné au moins 80% de mon mouvement!"

"Attention," he cautioned me. "N'en fais pas trop. C'est l'Aleve." It was, he said, the Aleve that was making me as spry as a 90-year-old former martial arts professional with mild arthritis, and I'd only do more damage to the muscle if I lost sight of this precious fact. I crept back to my place on the sofa and stayed very still until bedtime, when I took another.

Today, I let the 12 hours pass, just, you know, to see what would happen. A muscle spasm reaching for my laptop sent me creeping for the box and a glass of water.

Today's program: canceled.

At least there are no more sacs of sodden stuff in the courtyard, and now you must excuse me. It's time to take Mlle Fia Lux out to faire pipi and then settle on the sofa for Doha.
....

Understanding Rapide

"Eric Tabarly" bud

I don't know why I didn't notice until this morning that the incredibly thriving "Eric Tabarly" rose closest to the door -- and I say "incredibly thriving" because it has been sitting in a largish plastic pot for about 1 1/2 years, ever since the workers had me dig them up to start on the garden façade -- has produced many first buds, since I study it closely most days, but it might have to do with the fact that I think I understand what ailed Rapide better, having spent a day lying in bed with my laptop on my stomach, unable to move. The French call it, ever so quaintly for their "best in the world" medical system, a lumbago. It sounds like a dance.

It isn't. I assure you.

Not unless you consider using your hands and knees to get out of bed or stand up straight a dance.

It also makes me a little hungry for something I can't quite make out, sounding like some dish, too.

Oh, look! We use it too!

lumbago

[lumbā′gō]

Etymology: L, lumbus, loin

pain in the lumbar region caused by a muscle strain, rheumatoid arthritis, osteoarthritis, or a herniated intervertebral disk. Ischemic lumbago, characterized by pain in the lower back and buttocks, is caused by vascular insufficiency, as in terminal aortic occlusion. See also low back pain.

Mosby's Medical Dictionary, 8th edition. © 2009, Elsevier.

Actually, it sounds almost exactly like what Rapide was probably suffering, although my breeder friend called it cauda equina, also known as lumbosacral stenosis, and a bunch of other names. It's also a form of arthritism or a slipped disc or pinched nerve in the lumbar-sacral acrea, and after the last two days, I can completely relate to the whelps and whimpers every time I asked her to get up and walk, and even when she was just lying there. It "came and went" pretty much as suddenly for me as it appeared to for her, too. At least what pain remains is tolerable.

It's not the first time I have suffered this, but it was the worst time. It's no wonder, either, with what I put myself through, with the various tools I wield in the garden and the house, from shovels to pickaxes, and then the tons of rock and masonry debris I haul to the dump; I guess you could say that I'm asking for it, but poor Rapide?

Like mistress, like dog.

The first rosebuds probably appeared while I was whimpering in my bed.

And it wasn't due only to the back pain, either. No, it was also due to the pain of having to sit still and figure out what I want to do with the petit salon that my husband would also want done with this tiny little room. You'd think that would be easy, after all, I do know what he thinks the room should be. The problem is that I haven't been able to make up my mind in these long 8 years.

I alternate between a sitting room for reading, perhaps watching a proportionately tiny television, listening to and, now that the piano is about to come, playing music and an office outfitted with a piano. That seems selfish. To take one room of valuable real estate and make it about my work when I can do that at the kitchen/entry/living room table, or put a desk out in the summer room just seems selfish.

I opted for my husband's vision, and one that seems to go best with the piano.



"C'est beau," said my husband, after I gave him a tour of the future contents of the shallow storage closets that replaced the bookshelves I had had all around the door into the room from the entry (hall seems to great a word for the little space, off of which are this room, a narrow stair to the end bedroom and a WC, sans lavabo). I explained all about how they would be perfect to house the ironing board, iron, and other stuff that gets dumped into that room like an oversized utility closet.

I am all about having places to put things in a house that offers no place to put things, other than into the garbage as the radical solution.

"On dirait un château," he added, turning his eyes from the computer screen to me, "avec ce -- au fait, c'est quoi, une fenêtre?" He was talking about the oriole window above the door.

"Bon, ça peut être ça ou juste un cadre pour une autre porte cachée."

"Non, non, ça serait très joli," he hastened to say.

He liked it. He wasn't even complaining about the work it would, sans doute, involve. Or the expense. But my reply to that every time is, "Oh! We'll do that ourselves!," which rather adds to the burden of the first issue.

Of course, I could just do the room absolutely plainly. Plaster the walls right down to simple baseboards, but...

I want wainscoting.

And sometimes, when you use a lot of lines in a small room, you create, bizarrely, I know, the illusion of more space, while a very simple small room is "what it is," all apparent at once and small. I don't want it to be une chambre de moines, or a monk's room, but a little jewel box for the beautiful, beautiful piano, our books and photos. Maybe some new art work.

I get to choose it.

Now, where are those damn masons? They were "aiming" for 8 am. It's lunchtime, and the frogs just started calling.

If you'll excuse me, I have to go iron curtains and prepare the guest rooms for next week. Tomorrow, we leave on the TGV for a family wedding in Toulon, and our guests arrive next week right on our heels. Monday, I make boeuf bourguignon so I won't have to cook one night, but mostly so the house will smell good.

French, too, for our American guest. Even American houses can smell like Labrador Retrievers.

Sisyphe nods sagely.
....