My life as a frog elevator

Transformation complete, the tadpoles are frogs

I am so, so far behind. How to catch up, and where to begin? There is so much I haven't told in the ongoing saga with our building company, like the day I finally ranted against Georges as he followed me around the garden, and then sat, waiting patiently like Godot for me to finally come and join him.

"Madame Sisyphe, venez vous asseoir avec moi pour qu'on puisse discuter calmement."

"Non, Georges," I replied, calmement, "je ne vais pas venir m'asseoir à côté de vous car j'ai fini de marchander avec vous. Vous n'aurez pas d'autre réponse cet après-midi." After my statement that I wasn't going to come and sit with him to do any more dealing, I found him in front of me, kneeling. Had I not been so exasperated, I might have laughed so much he looked the perfect image of a gitan in the Paris métro (except they are women). As it was, it was infuriating. He sat back on his heels and finally down on the grass.

He hadn't given up.

Yesterday, he came to install the grill and the gate at the street, and Audouin said, "Il nous a demandé un avancé." An advance? That wasn't what the lawyer ordered.

"Ah bon? Combien?" How much? Georges smiled his usual grin -- somewhere between sheepish and guilty --, but it was my husband who replied.

"Il va nous le montrer juste avant de se casser, je pense." Meaning, my husband had figured it out; he wasn't saying. He'd present it to us just before getting the hell out of here, knowing the merde was going to hit the rotating blades as soon as I laid eyes on it. I went up to bed in the middle of the afternoon on a perfectly nice Saturday in September.

What else is there to do when you're going to have a nervous depression?

I wasn't asleep when I heard him giving the bill to my husband. I wasn't asleep when I heard my husband call me so Georges could say good-bye. I did us all a favor and played possum in my bed, the recently reinstalled shutters closed where the window still wasn't installed, shutting out the daylight and all activity outdoors. Almost. I could still hear them.

But why he was so secretive and coy about an advance as beyond me, unless he really felt badly asking for it when we had been very clear: no payment until all work completed. Because, it wasn't an advance at all, it was a bill for extras, an avenant. Georges had had a failure of mastery of the French language. An avenant refers to the terms by which a contract is changed, notably in the favor of the person to whom payment is due.

The paper was sitting on the dining table when I came down, Audouin out working on his balcony guardrail.

"Oh non! Non, non, non, non, non," I said.

"Je pensais que tu dirais ça," he said. That helped. I could accept that much humor and appreciated the inkling of solidarity it implied.

They were asking a few hundred euros here for the removal of the earth for the slab for the entry court paving, an evident part of paving an entry court.

They were asking a few hundred euros there to remove a tree that had always been slated for removal, as soon as my husband got over it and let them do it.

They were asking a few hundred euros to bury the pipes and electrical cables they knew ran under the dirt and would have to go under the slab.

They wanted many several hundred euros for the brick I told them to cancel for a wall when they told us how much they wanted to install it, telling me only the other day that he hadn't canceled it because it was already ordered at the time. But, not delivered. Key point. When I learned that on Thursday, I said, "You know my husband said no when he heard the price, 2,000 euros."

"Non, non, Madame Sisyphe," said Georges, indicating by the angle of inclination of his head and a movement of the shoulders that they were going to charge us pretty much the cost of the brick.

"Mon mari va péter un cable," I told him. Péter un cable means "lose it" in French. Georges found that amusing somehow.

Then, there was the many several hundred euros for the "complicated" brick work for the pillars.

Tonight, we have to decide what we are going to agree to pay, and what we are refusing. Basically 50%: everything having to do with the brick. Everything else is refused in my court.

Meanwhile, while I am sitting at the table working out the paving patterns, people are driving by and commenting on the house. On Friday, Georges told me that a car registered in the neighboring and wealthy département, l'Eure, pulled up alongside them. The man slid down his window and said that our house was beautiful, "exactement ce que je veux pour chez moi." He asked for their card, which Georges produced.

I realized in that second that I should have a sign on the house, naming myself as the architect and giving my contact information, as well as their company information.

"Georges, et s'il vous appelle, vous lui direz, certainement, qui est l'architecte?"

"Bien sur, Madame Sisyphe." Bien sur mon eye. As though he'd go out of his way to give credit where credit is certainement due. If they get business from this house, why is that? Hm? They have gone along kicking and screaming, trying to cut every corner and ruin the project with mass market crap windows and brick pillars and trying to wiggle out of everything they can, while I hold them to it and pay.

Like Friday, "Georges, vous allez faire l'ochre, oui?" They darkened the half-timber motifs and put the patina away without touching the ocre yellow walls that are too light.

"Oui, oui. On ne va pas se sauver sans les faires, mais, voulez ça ici," he pointed to the east façade next to which we were standing, "jusqu'en haut?" Was he crazy? He was asking if I wanted them to darken the ocre all the way to the top of the wall.

No, just do half of it, Georges.

I nodded, "Bien sur jusqu'en haut, et les trois façades de la partie plus récente aussi," comme vous le savez.

"Jusqu'en haut aussi?" How stupid is he, or how stupid does he think I am?

Don't answer. I prefer not to know, and I haven't even touched upon the disagreement between my life's partner and I about the extent of the brick paving on the garden side of the house. Reason number two why I have taken to my bed in a nervous depression.



But, the real news of the day is that the tadpoles have succeeded in their development to frog.

The past few days, I have seen nothing of them. Where did they go? To the bottom of the basin, down in the muck? Is this what they do when they get to the front leg stage and lose their tails? Why can't I see it like I got to see the rear legs sprout?

That's nature. You don't get to. Sorry.

This morning Audouin finally asked if I had seen the tadpoles recently. I hadn't. I shared my idea that maybe they do to the bottom of the pond (or whatever) to sprout their front legs and lose their tails. He nodded and wandered back to his balcony rail.

This afternoon, late in the day, something made me kneel down on the side of the basin by the reeds and peer into the Santa Barbara daisies. Something moved. It jumped. It definitely jumped. It was -- a tiny, baby, fully developed frog.

"Audouin, ca il y est! Les tétards sont devenus des grenouilles, et -- oh! Il y a encore des autres!" He came hurrying over to see what I had found. One, two, three -- five, six... baby frogs. We started trying to catch them to help them back into the basin before they became hors d'oeuvres for the animals, although I think they are poisonous for the cats and the dogs, and that the cats and the dogs know this.

Once my eyes got used to seeing them in the aquatic plants in the basin, I could see them everywhere. Seven, eight, nine, twelve! Thirteen -- I stopped counting and just took baby pictures for their album.

Three months from when we first saw the tiny, newly hatched tadpoles on June 24, they had done what they were supposed to do in that time and had become frogs.

I felt a surge of pride that the basin, which we had completely emptied to repair in April, had been capable of not only sustaining life but of allowing new life for both the fish and the frogs in a single season.

My life has new meaning, as I now have to worry about finding them in the plants around the basin and helping them get back in to survive.

I saw one that didn't make it. It's not nice what the sun does to them.

You can click on the album to go to Picasa and see it as a full screen slideshow. The little frogs are actually visible there.


....

Finies les vacances

The top of the front,

coming together

Le menuisier est triste de reprendre son autre métier aujourd'hui, mais l'hôpital ne peut pas attendre, les vacances finies.

Les progrès vont ralentir maintenant.
....

Why, thank you, Georges!

Hanging around with Georges is a little like having two husbands, and it is possible to have too much of a good thing.

Mais non, je plaisante.

All day long, starting yesterday, I have been hearing the little jabs about how expensive this particular brick is, as in, "Why did you have to select this very expensive brick that just gouged us when anyone else would choose what everyone else chooses that's a lot cheaper."

And, like you do with your husband, I smile disarmingly and say, "Oui, c'est beau, n'est-ce pas?" It wears on you after awhile. I try not to let it show, while praying for this to be over.

Then, the pillar started to go up. In the beginning, it wasn't much to look at, and that lower extra soldier course alongside the step down into the courtyard from the street definitely leaves something to be considered, hanging out there all by itself, unattached to any context that helps it make sense. Then, it started to... be.

"Cest beau, n'est-pas?" Jose grinned and nodded. No one discusses cost with him, or if they do, he doesn't care. He's not getting a cut on profits and he'll get paid anyway. Georges walked over.

"C'est vrai que c'est beau. C'est une belle brique. Vous avez bon goût, Madame Sisyphe," which amounts to "It's true that it's really nice. It's a beautful brick. You have nice taste, Madame Sisyphe." Sisyphe is not my real name, of course. It's my muse and my "nom de plume", de travail dur, de survie et d'espoir.

Why, thank you, Georges; that's why I'm the architect.

I thought that, I didn't say it. I said, "Voyez, vous-pouvez mettre ça dans vos matériels publicitaires pour impressionner vos clients futurs, 'Ah! Mais que c'est beau. Vous faites d'excellent travail!' ils diront. Ils viendront par des centaines pour des projets magnifiques!" I winked. Or, I would have if I were any good at it.

Instead, I just smiled disarmingly again.
....

Or, do like the workers and don't look at the plans at all

Brick pillars

getting it wrong

I took this picture and then came back inside and sat down feeling perfectly deflated. The lower courses should stand out by at least a centimeter, not barely perceptibly. How many time do I have to say it, shift them into place, only to return and find them pushed neatly back against the concrete core?

The longer I sat, the worse I felt. It didn't help that my stepdaughter had a huge fit last night and made us all miserable. Worse, she wasn't even at our house. This morning, I woke up with a fever blister, feeling like I'd slept in the subway, going repetitively through Astor Place, where it squeals horribly on the curved tracks.

Would I go out and see what was going on or suck it up?

I went out.

That was when I realized what I had seen in the picture above: they had begun the first course wrong. It was supposed to be three bricks, not two. Jose had made it up to the 5th or 6th, carefully laying the cement and placing the lengths of square wood to hold the courses for the mortar. He had to undo it. I had to tell him. How could he not have understood? I had made the drawings, reviewed them with them and even laid out the first several courses yesterday at the end of the day, and we had left them in place to get them going today.

I took a deep breath and said it.

"Ca ne doit pas commencer comme ça, mais comme le deuxième rang." They looked at me. I said it again. It doesn't start like that. The second course is the way the first should be. If not, nothing will work. I made the drawing precisely as it should be. All you have to do is follow it. Georges looked a little sheepish.

"Je vais chercher les plans de la voiture." Rough translation: "I'll go get the plans from the car."

God help us.

Meanwhile, Audouin has begin cutting out the mortises on the little balcony pieces. Pain-stak-ing.

I better finish the lunch dishes and get back out to them before something else goes wrong.
....

Measure twice, cut...

Once

inshallah

It's a gorgeous day. The kind that don't come often around here these days, but we have been exceptionally fortunate this year. First, a real winter; everyone asked, "Un vrai hiver pour une fois, peut-être on aura un vrai été cette fois-ci?" We waited. Summer broke clear and hot. We even went without rain without killing the crops around us, although things were getting pretty crispy in the garden right before I packed the Bimmer and headed for Dordogne. I spent two hours the evening before, in the near dark, watering copiously. It rained the 24th, maybe other days as well. You know why.

I watered for two hours the evening of the 21st.

Audouin came up to me sometime the week before he left for the Périgord with that look in his eye. The one that says, "Je t'ai cette fois-ci." Or, "This time I've got you."

"Oui?" I fear my irritation showed, as it usually does.

"T'as pas vu la plant là?" "There." That's his favorite way of referring to anything he has seen that I surely should have noticed and attended to, but neglected and let go to hell. Epic fail. I bit. You have to.

"Quelle plante où?" Which plant (mon amour, I said it all with my eyes) where.

"Là, sur la terrasse en bas, celle qui," here it came, the swipe of the knife, "est en train de mourir." Thrust. "Elle est, en fait, si tu me demandes, déjà morte." Dead. I and the plant. He was referring to a grapevine, the Chasselas Doré. It drops its leaves earlier than the others, actually.

"Elle est seche. Elle est en train de faire tomber ses feuilles dû à la secheresse et la chaleur. Elle n'est pas morte." I'm a Democrat. I don't know how to return the kill, other than to defend myself lamely and wait for events to prove me right. It could sprout leaves and he'd still say, "Tu vois, j'avais raison, si je ne l'avais pas vue, tu l'aurais laisser mourir."

As if I hadn't noticed. This, I let go. Like health care reform with teeth. It's best.

"Tu veux que je te le mettes ici pour que tu puisses mieux la surveiller?" Why not? Bring it on up here by the door, and then we can both watch it die. Together. That will be nice.

"Oui, bonne idée," is what I said. "Comme ça, je pourrais la voir de plus près. Mets-la un peu à l'ombre pour la proteger. Il y a des bourgeons de feuilles."

"Ils sont déjà morts," he pronounced, sure of himself and of my guilt. I let it drop.

I crunched all the dead leaves off, broke the twigs at the point where dry wood met green, and watered. Those dead leaf buds? They're opening.

He'd possibly rather it die to be right.

Then again, maybe not.
....

His project

Get a little closer, why don't you?

This does not exactly inspire confidence, but we're all used to it. Often, his nose touches the paper.

I exaggerate; his cheek does.

How, you ask, can that be? Well, he squints one eye closed and then brings the paper right up to his other eye, eyelashes tickling the fiber of the paper, or his eye right down to the surface he is examining, the work he is doing, the body on which he is operating.

No, no. I exaggerate. I don't know what on earth he does in the operating room. Maybe just feels his way through things. Actually, when there's a lot of blood involved, which is true in -- excuse me, but it's true -- obstetrics, at least, if less gynecology, is about the case.

I am, nonetheless, a little worried. He does not have the equipment of a professional wood shop to mark and cut the wood. He is using a mechanical pencil, a carpenter's "fat" pencil, a tape measure and an old protractor from the navy. His father's days in the academy? Something he picked up in a broccante? It usually sits collecting dust alongside his other precious naval bibelots on a shelf in the living room.

We drove back up from the Périgord Thursday in two separate cars, Sam driving the Bimmer alongside me and Audouin driving the Voyager, laden with 20 cases of Bergerac to set aside to age nicely, alongside his daughter. We followed. He looked miserable. About like he could throw himself from the window on which he leaned his head, propped on his elbow. I was a little miffed, shall we say, putting it nicely, with him the evening before our departure. I am sure there were very good reasons, but, as usual, I have forgotten them and remember only that they merited a good sulk. Snap goes the delicate strand connecting us.

Friday, he went to get the wood for the balcony. His project.

His Project.

He has assured me that he knows how to do this, but I think I have seen doubt cross his brow; I know it has crossed mine. I am swearing to let him get on with it and swear at himself, not at me, when and if he discovers that maybe it really does matter what you use to measure before you cut, and what you use to cut. From the sample cuts, I am not reassured. All I don't want is to have to live with a boy scout project rather than an accomplished finished project. Let me not rush to judge.

He has another week to work on it, although at this rate, it will be nearing Christmas before we'll know.

Meanwhile, I got another coat on the balcony. It's getting there. I could almost leave it the way it is. Almost.

By the way, the 3G+ key didn't pick up WiFi deep under in Dordogne. I missed you, but I got used to it. The days seem much longer without Internet.

Go figure.
....