Lidocaine for the soul

The mother frog,
or yellows

The past couple of days, I have gotten up early so as to be able to be extra unproductive. This morning, I gave up. Too bad. It was a nice morning, and the afternoon is not so nice. In fact, I think it will rain again.

This must be another phase of mourning. It's unpleasant. You don't even have the benefit of the exquisiteness of pain and tears, just nothing. It's like eating the hollow fine dark chocolate Easter bunny and getting to the middle part. Your heart hurts, but as diffusely as your most acute thought, which never gets beyond something you can't quite identify tapping on your consciousness in gloved hands. Your brain seems to be wearing gloves, too, or just all the gauze you looked for when you burned your stomach ironing the skirt you were wearing.

The steam might burn you.

"Yeah. I know."

And you don't care? That was myself speaking. You probably recognize the voice by now.

"Well, of course." My thought trailed off to follow every other one I had attempted in the last three weeks.

You lift the hem of your skirt, just to get that area at the zipper that is all puckered, the one you didn't do, taking some care to step back as far from the ironing board as possible. You press the steam button and feel the pain.

So, you cared, you say?

You lift your skirt to look at the white skin of your abdomen and see the spot turning pink.

"Shit." Myself wandered off to more promising things.

By evening, you can tell your husband when he comes home what you did.

"On entend ça des femmes enceintes --" He was chuckling. He is, if you recall, an Ob/Gyn. I didn't even have that excuse.

"Oui. Le ventre. J'imagine." I hoped for him not to press quite how I accomplished this. He was content enough to continue to be amused, thinking of all those women whose bellies surprised them. Later, getting ready for bed, I showed him.

"Mais, c'est mauvais," he said, surprised. He has admired my courage since Baccarat was hospitalized and died. I can feel my value rising.

"Oui, je sais." The skin was coming up over an angry red spot now where the elastic of my panties had rubbed it. I had chosen to ignore it rather than bandage it from the first. No wonder, I thought, it hurt.

Finding no tape for the gauze, I got out my precious Neosporin with lidocaine, squirted some liberally on the wound and applied a sports Band-Aid for the knee. I wouldn't have to tell anyone of the misuse of the Band-Aid, but I might look even worse in a bikini once we left for vacation.

Maybe I'll just stay home.

Today, I saw a tadpole. We wondered why we hadn't seen any, since we had observed the behavior characteristic of their arrival. I thought I saw one the other day. They don't move through water in quite the same way as fish, but please don't ask me to describe the difference to you. It's something you sense more than analyze. It is already quite large and probably about to develop rear legs, so it has been around for some weeks, which makes sense, given what we observed, my husband actually calling me over to see. As though with the time I spend at the bassin I had never had this opportunity for observation or frog reproductive behavior.

Meanwhile, I pray I get back to normal (better than normal, actually) soon. I don't think the house and garden can take much more of my mental absence.

And, I forgot to turn off the hose and I burned the plums the neighbor left yesterday that I was simmering into a compote.
....

Hello Frog!

The first frog

They're baaaack!

I knew if I were quiet enough today that I would see one. I was certain I had heard the characteristic "splosh, splosh" of two diving back into the water to escape being seen by me yesterday, and, sure enough, looking in exactly the place where I am most likely to catch one thinking he (or she) is outsmarting me, I saw through the algae a rear foot push off to get away, and then its head!

I know. I am using exclamation points to talk about frog sitings in my basin, but this is what I live for. This is why I live here. To squat by the side of the basin and watch for the frogs, take pictures of the frogs who have chosen to make this old fountain, turned into a fish and wildlife sanctuary quite accidentally by my husband years ago, when he first lived here, their home.

And this after we had to empty it, catching the poor frogs with a children's fish net I bought in the Finisterre for the purpose, and placing them into a makeshift home, while we located the leak that had killed so many of the fish in the terrible freeze of January 2009, and repaired the basin. Most of them jumped from the plastic tub I had also bought in an agricultural supply store in the Finisterre, also just for the purpose, but they returned, once the basin was restocked with its stones, plants, new fish from the local garden centers (our defunct Florosny and Truffaut), who made a new generation of fish, native to the basin, and the mud from the bottom that I had saved in pails, just for the frogs. At least those who would.

They also made lots of tadpoles we had the great pleasure of watching turn into baby frogs, who would go hibernate somewhere in the garden or beyond this first winter of their lives. Some will return to live in the basin, some will find elsewhere to live, many others will have perished in their travel to find a suitable place to winter.

That is nature.

This year, a new cycle begins, and I am right here to follow the progress with about the greatest joy, enthusiasm and sense of rightness in the little world around me that I can imagine. It isn't easy to describe this to people who haven't lived it, or who are used to finding pleasure in so much more, and I tend to protect it, not sure I can stand the looks of confusion or incomprehension I might see.

Anyone who wants to come squat by me, very quietly, and watch the frogs is welcome. Just please close your eyes if you should come into the house.
....

Almost completely a baby frog

Look what I got to see! (Probably just because it's my birthday today.) A tiny baby frog with a bit of tail still!

H A P P Y B I R T H D A Y T O M E !

Life's little wonders and Facebook, plus a little laundry and sanding, are all I need to have such a lovely day.

Which is a good thing because it didn't start off so well.

I took Sam to the lab for blood tests -- Nothing serious, just teenage school-induced misery resulting in lots of tummy flus, although he's sure he has mono. I had it, and I can tell you that he doesn't. But, the doctor tested for it anyway -- and then to pick up his scooter, which he had left locked in a nicer neighborhood of the city near Moosesucks where he goes to school, when I picked him up from school yesterday. I took his feverish self directly to the doctor, merely stopping to pick up Sikkens stain for the windows at a wood retailer and then Leroy Merlin for some more Decapex.

"Mom, I really am feeling very sick, you know."

"Just one more stop, Sam. I need to be efficient, you know!"

"I'll tell you that when you're sick."

When we arrived, Sam let out a sigh.

"Part of the scooter is gone. Part of the front of the scooter." I looked closer. He was right, the entire part with the headlight that covers the wires was missing, its insides visible. "They tried to hotwire it." The U-lock was still there, locked through the rear wheel. It wasn't like they were getting anywhere very fast, but his friend's dirt bike was stolen out of his garage, forced entry, and they cut right through the U-lock.

This on top of the theft attempt one night a year ago, which resulted in having to replace the front fork; they threw it to the ground after they tried to force the locked direction and couldn't.

Houston, we have a crime problem, in case you hadn't heard.

Immigration and integration have been wonderful success stories. That's the other side of France, the one that makes me so angry.

But guess what? We can declare theft with the police on-line now!

Happy birthday to me!
Happy birthday to me!
Happy birthday, dear Sisyphe!
Happy birthday to me!

And many more.

And from Bev. You know who you are!



Wait! Why doesn't this video work? Someone stole it, too?
....

If you didn't see it, you probably weren't

Baby frog recently helped back into the "pond"
clinging to a plant

You know the end to this one, "looking". How many times did your mother tell you that after you came running to her to say your sweater wasn't right on top of your bed, or the orange juice wasn't in the door of the refrigerator like she said it was? And it was. How many times have you told your own children, the man sharing your home (you know what I'm talkin' about, unh-huh), -- or, if you are that man, have you heard-- that very same thing?

The problem is in the question How can I know, though? In other words, maybe I saw them because they appeared between the last time I looked and this time. Or, maybe they really were there the last time, but my eyes didn't see them because I wasn't expecting them. Them being the tiny baby frogs and what appeared to be the absence of tadpoles, but which wasn't true because there are tadpoles. Several of them.

I knew rationally that there had to be tadpoles still because when the first ones I had seen back on June 24 were getting bigger, there was a new batch of tiny little black ones that had hatched.

I thought I couldn't see when they sprout tiny little forelegs, but this isn't true, either, because now that I have seen the tiny baby frogs, I am also seeing the tadpoles with tiny little forelegs and tails. They are even right next to each other.

No one is even hiding. They are right there in front of me, it's just that their behavior has changed, so they are in different places, doing different things.

For example, now that they are little tiny frogs, they like to be on the plants sometimes. Or, they cling to the inside edge of the basin wall, just above the water line. Except that, now that I think about this, that's not really entirely new at all. It's what they did when they were tiny little tadpoles -- with the exception that now they can do it just above the water, rather than having to be in the water --, when they weren't swimming around. I found it surprising that they can do this, and then I remembered what I noticed when I hold one on a finger or my palm: they are sticky.

This has not yet led me to deduce that they can, in fact, climb back up the immensely tall (for them), 40 cm wall and into the "pond".

What they do do less of is swim around, but they are there, just under the edges of the floating aquatic plants. And, if I spend enough time looking, I can see them swim still from here to there. There are merely fewer of them doing it, so they seem to have disappeared.

Lessons in looking. In observing.

They fascinate me, these small creatures. The fish, too. They are alternately cute and beautiful, darting and then gliding about in the water, gathering near me to be sure there isn't food in the offing, and then dispersing again to play among themselves when they have determined that my purpose in being there lies elsewhere.

If I place the tip of my finger on the surface of the water, some will come and nibble it. Just in case it isn't food. It doesn't take them long to figure that it is not.

Fish kisses, as I prefer to think of them.

....

No workers again today. Georges told me Friday that we would have the windows Monday.

"Je ne suis pas contente, Madame Sisyphe," he said, appearing for all the world to be scornful of the window guy. "Il m'a dit aujourd'hui, et les fenêtres ne sont pas prêtes." He shook his head to prove to me that he was dépassé by the attitude of the window guy. "Je lui ai dit, 'Imagine un peu, ils n'ont pas de fenêtres et il commence à faire frais'." Yeah, imagine that. It's Tuesday and we still don't have any workers here installing the windows that were supposedly ready for installation yesterday.

The work is definitely being held hostage again. I find that dishonest. Tactical. Cowardly. I am, in a word, disgusted, dépassée by Georges and his cohort. Joaquim. (I feel friendly toward them when they are here, Georges and José, but when they do this, Georges and Joaquim, I wonder how I can feel as friendly as I do. Taken in again).

Sigh. I'm off to strip the frame of the window in the petit salon. There's so much to do that I feel impossibly small before the task.

Can someone put their eyes on me in a way that makes me bigger? Please?


....

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.


....

The food chain

No drowned slug goes wasted

This is how frogs' legs get fat for eatin'.

No, we do not eat our frogs here. We take pictures of them. OK, I take pictures of them and worry over them lest they should leave the fish-pond-in-a-fountain and fall pray to one of our cats, which has happened. Sadly. They don't even eat them. They don't even kill them all the way. They just open their guts and leave them helpless to die in the heat.

Bad cats.

And then there was the dog (Baccarat, but I'm not mentioning any names) who bit the lily flower off its stem.

Bad dog.
....

Watching the tadpoles grow up

Legs

The first hind legs (they develop first) appeared over last weekend on the largest of the tadpoles, at about 1 month old. I first spotted them on June 24. If you click on the picture, you can see it much larger, and there they are, delicate hind legs.

The head, which ends up being the head and body, is starting to look very froggish, with the beginnings of the wide mouth and bulging eyes. It's also developing the frog's eventual color, green in this case, with the stripe forming down the back from the tip of the nose.

There are lots of tadpoles. Audouin keeps asking what I am going to do with them, suggesting that we need to get rid of them, and I just tell him that nature will see to that all on its own. In this particular species, and perhaps it is true of others, the frogs born that year do not hibernate in water. They leave their birth area. This is perhaps the mechanism that helps determine the fittest that will survive and forces them to establish territory. They won't all return to our fish-pond-in-the-fountain.

At least I don't think they will.
....

Work under way, again

7.9.09

From the village, as it were.

We're approaching the long July 14 weekend, in which nothing will be done Monday or Tuesday. Bets are open to see if they'll be back on Wednesday.

I think the fear of God has sunk in. The letter back in April, or May, was it?, seems to have had the desired effect.



You'll note the sky. It's July.

There's a brilliant ray of late evening sunlight on the same façade right now. I know because I can see it on the trees out the window from where I sit.

If I weren't so tired from a "suite de soirs" out on the town and with friends and family, I'd actually go take another, cheerier picture. We'l see.

Op, it's gone.

Ah! It's back.

By the way, some of the tadpoles are up to 3 cm long. Much fatter, they still have tails, but no rear legs yet. I don't see as many, but they swim around, dart under the bottom plants and seem more wary of me.
....

What are the odds?

Pelophylax kl. esculentus and I observe one another

from a short distance

I counted 60 in fewer seconds this morning. They were all gathered together in 3 or 4 groups, making it easy to count them. I read that typically 5 tadpoles will develop for 2,000 eggs laid and fertilized.

60 divided by 5 equals 12. 12 times 2,000 equals 24,000 eggs. A female will lay from 3,000 to 10,000 eggs at a time. So, we are looking at anywhere from 2 to 8 couplings in the basin.

Also possible is that the relatively low numbers of natural predators in a fish-pond-in-a-fountain right outside our front door equals a greater survival rate for the eggs to hatch.

Understand also that I only bothered to count 3 or 4 groups in the basin this morning. That doesn't count everyone else in the other 3/4 to 4/5 of the area.

They are also definitely newly hatched since they measure no more than 6 to 8 mm from snout to the tip of the tail, and they have no rear appendages apparent yet. Those come along before the front legs.

These frogs are going to have to find themselves homes.

And, ah, oui, they are the edible sort.
....