Blue like my oatmeal bowl

and campanules

Sisyphe is contemplating a hiatus. Overwhelmed with ennui, or just overwhelmed with things she has no desire to do, preoccupied with the past and sick to death of the dog hair and dirt (but not the dogs), grumpy and short of patience with all things political, she is neither insightful nor funny, if ever she were, which it appears that she might have been on a very few occasions because she was thanked for it specifically. But now, she is not in the least.

It's what happens when something bigger than everything else happens, but you can't talk about it because it has no place in a blog. It obliterates all the rest.

I picked up the Jane Austen volume on the table next to my bed again. Persuasion. Not my favorite. Jane lets it start to lag with the-head-injury-by-the-sea. One starts to prefer the modern day methods of just telling the gentleman in question that, yes, you still love him more than anything in the world and hope that he can forgive you for having been persuaded, with all the pain that occasioned you, to decline the offer of his hand. You would, in short, be the happiest woman alive if he would but offer it again.

Note, too, that he doesn't come equipped with an ex (or two) and children. Eight years have passed, and he is, incredibly, only improved by additional confidence and the glow of maturity, wealth and accomplishment.

The best of the Austen men were truly the best of men.

Sisyphe needs to duct tape herself firmly to the present and form the sort of incompletely informed but terribly sure opinions about others that would allow her to class them away as unworthy of her limited emotional resources as they seem to have found the means to do themselves. I mean, just how hurt can you be and still be worth anything?

....

So, the marmalade cat update

It now looks like short of running into the neighbors as they are packing their moving truck, we will have neither news nor thanks from them.

I took Wisp to the vet last week to have the vaccinations she couldn't have last January because she had to have a shot of cortizone for her progressive mid-line hair loss that began at the tail and crept up her spine. The vet said it wasn't because I sprayed her with the Frontline spray I use on the dogs, but I think he's wrong. He said this condition usually comes from flea saliva, but I had 3 of our 4 animals with me, and not one of them had any flea droppings in its tail-end fur. Besides, this has been the coldest winter I can remember in a very long time. Those would be hale and hardy fleas to have survived it to jump onto my cat around Christmas. I also took Rapide to have him check out the cyst in her left tear duct that they are going to remove the 19th.

Anyway. Back to the story I began.

The technician (nurse, they call them here) that day knew more. She told us that it was thought that the cat could be immobilized for 3-4 weeks to allow its pelvis to heal. They were amazed that our neighbors hadn't come to thank me for getting their cat to a vet quickly.

"Well, if they don't think that I did it, but was too cowardly to admit it, or if they don't think that I really did know that it was their cat that I hit and took to my own vet, instead of taking much more thoughtfully to their own vet, probably the one in Freneuse, closer to where we live, then they are just rude."

"Don't worry, you couldn't have taken it to the one in Freneuse, anyway. He never works on Saturdays," said my vet, who does work Saturdays, right along with his colleagues, in a very disparaging tone of voice.

There's one thing about which I feel much better. Not that I ever had reason to feel badly. That's just me. Torture myself for other people's lackings and rudenesses, sure it's my fault.

I mentioned to Audouin that a "vendue" sign had gone up in front of their house, without there ever having been an "à vendre" one. We knew they intended to move permanently to their vacation home, somewhere else, far away.

"Je me démande comment serront nos nouveau voisins."

"Probablement plus gentils."

Il y a des fortes chances.

....

Animal passports

So, do you know how much it costs now for vaccinations for your found cat? More than 100 euros. That's right. The European Union has decided that from January 1, 2009, all domestic animals that heed vaccinations will have to have a passport. It's sort of like your passport, only it contains their entire record of vaccination. They don't need it only if they intend to travel for business or pleasure, but if they are going to get their vaccinations. It costs about 60 euros, and it is good for life, or until the EU decides to replace it with something fancier and costlier still.

To have a passport, the animal must be tattooed or have an electronic identification chip inserted behind the skin of the neck under the ear (preferred nowadays). No chance of passing another pooch for the actual passport holder.

So, take the case of Will O'Wisp, who my husband found lying, dying of hunger on a walking path in the woods along the old sand quarry in the center of the boucle. At 1.5 kg, she was nearly gone. A soaking wet beg of bones that could barely lift its head, let alone stand on her four paws. Her rear legs were so atrophied that they collapsed under her very meager weight. You could feel the exact profile of each and every one of her vertebrae, the sides, too.

We fed her and let her sleep on a towel in the crook of my arm, where she still sleeps if Audouin refuses her the place between our two heads, where she likes to burrow against both of us, or if she hasn't selected Baccarat or Rapide in our place for the night. We took her to the vet to see if she carried diseases that needed to be treated for her to gain strength and survive. She did both, and last week, her third round of vaccinations since he brought her home cost us over 100 euros. That was on top of the nearly 300 we had spent in January to have both dogs vaccinated and get Wisp a shot of cortizone for her mange-like condition. She now carries a little medal announcing that she is protected by an electronic chip.

"I'll hang it with her other jewels," I quipped to the vet and his nurse, referring to the little puffy heart that came with her collar, hanging next to the nametag I had made for her, a heart with a little pink bling to match her pink collar. "This found cat announces to the world that she has humans who care." They laughed. Now we just have to hope that she's smart enough to get across the street without getting hit first. Cars can't read little medals and nametags, or see that they are heart-shaped with pink bling.

I arrive at my point, which is a question. Is the EU, in its desire to protect animals and humans, actually putting them more at risk by pricing routine care for peoples' much-loved domestic pets out of their reach? It's a huge budget, when you add it all up, and include feeding them decent food. For the two dogs, it's a 13 kg bag of veterinary food at nearly 80 euros every 5-6 weeks, plus the cats, who are managing on Purina, for now. The dogs are off the Pro Plan until they lose -- well, until Rapide loses a little more weight. She has already lost just about all she needs to. Then, they go on the maintenance food, and I might just keep them on this brand because Rapide's skin and fur improved just as much and as overnight as the vet predicted it could.

There are many people on fixed incomes, who find themselves facing their vet, announcing that they need a passport and an electronic chip for little Pierrou, people who are already feeding their beloved pet the cheapest brand of food available on the grocery store shelves. They join their pet at the food bowl for the next month, or leave and put their animal at risk.

Or, they can always eat cube steaks, like everyone else trying to eat on a tight budget these days.

You see, in the very, very rare instance that rabies is found, all animals within a certain radius who have not been vaccinated are systematically rounded up and put down. No exceptions. This actually happened near Bordeaux not very long ago. The culprit was Tikki, a dog illegally imported from Morroco to France. In the summer of 2004, Tikki died of rabies, after having been in contact with legions of humans and other animals, which started a domino chain of preventitive vaccinations for humans and the euthanasia of numbers of domestic animals whose owners could not show proper records of vaccination against rabies.

....

"She needs to lose weight"

These words from the vet, concerning Rapide, were just about the best thing that could have happened to me. Better than hearing my own doctor (or husband, one in the same) say it to me. It came just after I had dragged myself back to the gym, after nearly a year away. My excuse? The election. Who had time to work out and follow all the news? But, I was going back to the gym, since November, but without the regularity of application that I needed. Rapide was also spreading, and becoming accustomed to a level of inactivity that surpassed only my own. Baccarat was also at risk, although her sprints to the door any time I stood up from my laptop screen or reached for my coat to head to the store were preventing the same level of engraissement as her mother and I were suffering.

The vet might as well have told the three of us that it was time to lose weight.

January 2, we started our walking and hill program, and Rapide hated me for it. Maybe resented. She didn't seem to hold it against me between torture sessions, but it was another story during those walks, where she dragged along behind as far as the length of leash would allow her, the collar slipped up over the right ear (she walks on my left), sucking air like a Hoover.

"Au pied, Rapide!" She wasn't having it. Baccarat trotting along just ahead of me, ready to go faster, and Rapide dragging her full weight along behind, trotting like a sulky 14-year-old girl, who really wanted to plod, but my own pace wouldn't let her. She did all but stop short and refuse to move forward. It was all I could do not to scream. I did not look forward to our walks, as much as I love it when we arrive at the top of the rise onto the ridge road and walk along it under the stars, Mantes lit up below, off beyond the other side of the Seine to the right and the fields stretching off to our left to the Seine, la Roche-Guyon and the further ridges beyond. The Seine cuts a deep swath in an otherwise high landscape. There are very few cars up there late in the evening.

Night after night, we repeated the same scenario until Audouin read me the riot act for walking up the unlit road to the ridge in the dark with two black dogs, and once I got over my pout -- who did he think he was? My father? Not that I couldn't have used one of those... but that's the past -- I headed the other way from the gate, to the other end of the village where there's a really steep bit of street. Rapide looked at me like, "Are you being serious?" She didn't like the look I returned her.

Of course, all I had to do was get a flashlight for our walk, and put on a reflective jacket. They even make them for dogs, right along with reflective, neon yellow or orange collars for hunting.

"On y va, les fi-filles."

We walked that hill four times in a row, making U-turns at the top and the bottom, Rapide hauling her hind end up that slope at the far end of her leash and panting for all she was worth until I started to feel guilty for making their greatest pleasure -- a walk -- her greatest misery. After several evenings' application, my own hind quarters ached from the effort. Reluctantly, I let up on her. I could go to the gym for that, but she just needed to walk, not die of a heart attack.

The results of two months' effort were measured last week. When the vet came in, he sat down on the lowered examining table, at eye level with her haunches.

"Je pense qu'elle a perdu de poids," I ventured. He petted her and continued to look at her, where her waist cuts in nicely now at the pelvis.

"Oui, à l'oeil, je dirais qu'elle a perdu. C'est bien."

"Mais, je l'ai pesé, et elle est à 40 kg!"

"Vous venez de le faire ici?" he asked. I nodded.

"La balance ici rajoute 10%. Il faut l'enlever pour son vrai poids." That meant that she was at 36 kg. 35 is the goal.

I am not telling you how much I weigh still! I can't anyway, since I refuse to weigh myself.

Rapide is nearly on maintenance -- as well as trotting right along, for the most part, when she feels like it, like a champion with much greater respiratory ease --, and I am back at it. I even got my bike out and rode it the 16 or 17 km to the gym and back last week, and to the grocery store. We walk every day, at least 45 minutes -- although twice that would be good for them -- but that's hard for me if I am also going to the gym. Take the day that I rode my bike to the gym. That was 45 minutes there, 75 at the gym, 45 minutes back, followed by a 45 minute walk with the dogs.

I'd have time for nothing else.

Which might not be so bad.

And, no workers today. We expected them to be gone "2 or 3 days" last week, which I understand to mean the entire week, but today, too? The clouds have come to cover the bright blue sky, and I really, really need to attack the crap in the house and take what I absolutely can't throw away (yet) to the attic. I live in perpetual self-recrimination and guilt because we have no storage space and vast amounts of clutter, dust and dog fur. Worse, I can't work on anything I need to do when I know the house is in need of attention.

"Prends une femme de ménage," suggested Audouin. I explained that a cleaning lady will only keep the house as nice as she finds it when she first comes. We need to do the interior first, and then get a cleaning lady to help me. I cannot abide dust and clutter.

....

Fish flourishing

They come out from behind the conrete block when I talk to them again. I am forgiven the assault I committed, removing them from their home, the fish-pond-in-a-fountain?

I just went and did some basic research on goldfish. We don't have koi. I know that because they don't have the barbels on the lip that koi do (see the koi to the right), and the original fish in the basin were more likely two very ordinary goldfish Audouin thought had to be unhappy living in a bowl and released into the vaster confines of the old fountain. He was right, they probably were bored to tears and sad:

Goldfish are curious fish that will quickly become bored without items or other fish to interact with. If placed in a bare aquarium goldfish will settle to the bottom and only move when fed or frightened by sudden jolts. However, if put in a tank with sufficient gravel, aquarium accessories or plants (real or fake) they will make themselves at home. Adding a few companion fish will also help, but make sure each fish has plenty of personal space.

I knew it! I knew from hours of watching them that they are not as stupid as people say they are. If you live with them, and you watch them, you know they aren't. You also know what the Wikipedia article goes on to say, that they are mildly territorial. Ours lived in three clans, each tending to occupy the same area of the old fountain, although in the coldest winter weather, they would often all retreat beneath the old stone sink that Audouin placed in the fountain as a planter, and which is no longer visible under all the plants.

I also learned to understand reproductive behavior in them. I am nearly certain that one of them is carrying eggs right now, but I haven't seen any males potentially present chasing and prodding her to get her to release her eggs, which I am hoping to see. First, I have to see if I can figure out what the white spots on the gills of the males in mating mode actually look like. If that ever happens, I have to be on the lookout for the eggs, since I should consider removing them from the can so the others won't snack on them. Now, how do I do that? I am also, apparently, supposed to feed them "fry food". I'm sure that's easy. Just head over to Florosny and ask, "Excusez-moi, mais auriez-vous du 'fry food'?"

They're called "tubercles". I found a photo. I have seen these; I had no idea they meant that the fish were in mating condition. The only ones left are very light colored, and since my aggression of them, they are avoiding me a little, so it will be harder to see if they show any tubercles.

And, while the concrete block was one appropriate gesture, I need to give them some additional stuff, like plants, gravel and some stones, and fast, along with changing out their water now that they live -- for the moment -- in a confined fish can.



....

Yellow

Yes! I just bought our tickets to ColdPlay "Vida la Viva!" at le Parc des Princes September 7! We'll have never looked forward to la rentrée, even before the end of the current season of misery that is Sam's school year. We went to the concert at Bercy last September, on the 10th. Oh, it seems like yesterday (sung to the tune of "Yellow". It works. Go ahead, try it.)

Yeah, I went for broke and got the best places left available, which are the second to best.

Sam told me while we were away that he wanted to get them for us for my birthday in September, but it would have been nearly 200 euros, so I splurged and included Audouin for both of our birthdays, Sam's and mine. We'll have to take two motorcycles.

I cannot wait.

I cannot wait.

I cannot wait.

Cold Play under the stars, and "Lovers in Japan"... all over again.

Look at the stars
Look how they shine for you
And everything you do
Yeah, they were all yellow

Excuse me, I have to go practice my best sing-a-long voice for the stadium performance. Even Beaker seems cooler with Chris Martin's voice coming from him. Uh, sort of.

Yeah, they were all yellow...
....

When the thieves come home to crow

Evening, both lindens are done

No, it's good; I still have partial use of my hands. Both of them. I can't get my rings off, but my mother-on-law wouldn't like it if I went without them, anyway. I should take that as a compliment. I do.

My timing, if not my hands, was exquisite. My hands look like they belong to someone much, much older and coarser than I.

Ahem.

The weather was beautiful for several days, before the clouds scuttled in yesterday afternoon, and a chill wind blew, bringing rain last night and again this afternoon. I don't remember when it started, only that the sun shone. Sunday, I worked outside and cleaned out the daylily border on the right intermediate terrace. For those of you who haven't been reading me -- doggedly; I'm sorry -- since last year, I provide the link to the plan. It will help you to understand that the house sits on the top of five terraces. For the complete description, see that post, but for our purposes, it will suffice to know that the two linden trees are the big rounds on the house terrace. They look -- please excuse me -- like breasts (the guys just ran to check it out). The other circle, the one between them and a little higher, is the old fountain that Audouin turned into the pond-in-a-fountain, or basin (full account of his efforts in the same post).

You'll notice that there is a stair that cuts down the "center" of the garden, on axis with the French door into the main living space of the house, and that the garden is approximately symmetrical about that axis.

Descending the first few stairs, you arrive on the shallow second terrace. The raised planting borders on the southern side (downhill slope) contain the lavender bushes, the two weeping roses, and several very old, woody tea rose bushes. Roses are not particularly compatible with lavender, preferring a moister, heavier soil, but they manage. I cut them back exceptionally vigorously this year, and to my chagrin, I later realized that I left nothing but a single overly large woody stem from the first white one on the right. I'll have to replace it. It did quite well, too. That will teach me to cut back with such vigor before I have adequately pruned the lavender and can see what I am doing.

At one end, there is an enormous bay, and at the other end, there is a set of stairs, leading to the perpetually humid and moss-covered guest room terrace. It doesn't get sun. If I cut out the overgrown ivy and the ancient, lichen-covered unrecognizable apple tree, that should help. Beside the stairs is the dogwood I planted a couple years back, and behind that, the suffering rhododendron Victor and Tony gave me the firesale price for last summer, with a wink. They knew I'd get it to thrive. It's doing well, and Chloé lies just beyond its roots now. She'll have many beautiful spring flowers. Perhaps I'll plant her a new apple tree. A crab. We'll see.

From this point, three stairs lead to three different areas. The stair along the axis leads to the bottom of the garden, half civilized, with a pool, and half overgrown and waiting for my administrations, and a garage.

The shorter stair to the right leads to what I refer to as the right intermediate terrace, and the same stair to the left leads, most sensibly, to the left intermediate terrace, and a farther one, somewhat lower, where the garden widens at its lower levels, behind the France Telecom utility building at street level. We'll get to that one. It's just above the side of the bottom garden that has the pool, and the birch and tulip tree cluster.

The right and left intermediate terraces each terminate on the downhill side with a very tall -- 9-10' -- retaining walls. Each terrace is made of banks of St. John's Wort, which tumble from the roses and lavender to the paths at the borders, daylilies on the right and sage and oregano (not a particularly good idea) on the left side. The retaining wall is topped on the right with a series of 7 urns that punctuate the daylilies with cascades of petunias in the summer. The right side being larger, a niche is cut into the center of the sloped bank of St. John's Wort with a small retaining wall, against which is placed a bench.

The remaining terrace to the left, off the left intermediate terrace, contains an octagonal gazebo, called a "gloriette", and a barbecue. Both need rebuilding. Another project.

Very little of this was visible -- practically -- 8 years ago, when I saw it for the first time. The garden had not had a caretaker, a gardener, for many years, although some of the structures appear to date from 1991. While they knew how to build an ugly barbecue, they seemed unaware that plants require pruning, borders weeding, everything care.

The daylily border rid of the dead leaves from last year, left to protect the roots and help mulch against weeds, and the paths rid of the several tons of leaves the wisteria on the arch over the central stair is capable of dropping, I decided to undertake the biannual pruning of the linden trees, described yesterday and the day before. I have already exhausted two chains, after just these two trees. I did cut out a fair number of extraneous main branches that were growing into each other and making the canopies too dense. I hope that with them gone, more light will filter down to the ground below and give us some mottled sun, rather than deep shadow. Audouin lay in his sickbed, offering, "Tu travailles bien," and a weak smile every time I came up to see how he was faring.

In 6 1/2 years, I have never seen him not go to the hospital 2 days in a row. I avoided our room like the plague it promised, delivering glasses of water, Coca-Cola, orange-mango juice that went undrunk until yesterday, when the cortisone opened his swollen, angry throat enough to let him get some sips down. Before that, most everything came back up, the unpleasant way. I guess there is only one way it can, and it is unpleasant. I stood and watched him, waiting to see a sign that there was hope for a full recovery. It came yesterday with his first real smile.

The one that makes me wonder why I think I need to divorce him half the time, when I am really furious for one reason or another, and why suddenly seems frivolous.

I know it's time to get out of there and back to whatever I am doing, wherever there is, and whatever I am doing, when he smiles it.

He does deserve better, doesn't he?

....

We're all lovin' him

It looks like taking my advice to keep talking to the American people, which you have been so good at doing, and not to their elected representatives in Washington (for now), which no president is so good at doing (it's their job, as they see it, to resist you), is working, Mr. President.

OK, so I wasn't the one to whom he was listening, but I did say it, somewhere in here, back in January. Today's Wall Street Journal online article "Obama Gets Strong Support in Poll" shows that it's the way to go:

WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama enjoys widespread backing from a frightened American public for his ambitious, front-loaded agenda, a new poll indicates.

He is more popular than ever, Americans are hopeful about his leadership, and opposition Republicans are getting drubbed in public opinion, the new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll suggests.

Which is one piece of good news as we have to swallow another less than palatible one, which is that the ex-leadership of Countrywide is profiting from the bad loans they offered that catapulted the global economy into catastrophic free-fall.

“It is sort of like the arsonist who sets fire to the house and then buys up the charred remains and resells it,” said Margot Saunders, a lawyer with the National Consumer Law Center, which for years has sought to place limits on what it calls abusive lending practices by Countrywide and other companies.

It figures. Win on the upside, and win again as it's all coming down around everyone else.

Is it that this requires a special talent, or merely the overriding of all personal ethics, which some of us seem unable to do?

Oh, it's nice to hear that this is at least helping some be able to hold onto their homes, with 50% decreases in their mortgage interest rates making their payments affordable again.

....

Of frogs and fish

Audouin was most certainly mistaken. It must have been his own voice croaking weakly in his feverish head that he heard because there is no sign from the frogs, somewhere in all that siltish muck.

I'm waiting.

The fish, on the other hand, appear to be taking courage in their little public housing project temporary residence in trash can and concrete block. I pulled one of the Eric Tabarlys over, the ones that have been sitting in pots, waiting for the house to be finished for replanting in their newly christened planting beds below the balcony (I hope they are as patient as I have to be, and Job), and let its oddly horizontally growing stem hang down over their concrete block and water. It makes a little reflection and gives them something to look at, like a crib toy.

It's raining. I won't be burning all of this pruned wood today. I guess I'll clean our bedroom and save the walk with the dogs for later. I missed our window of opportunity.
....

La solidarité in America: the second Enlightenment revolution

Solidarity, peeps, that's the word.

Now, where did I see that just yesterday? Ah, yes, Joan Walsh in Salon.com, Class Warfare? Bring in on.

Yeah, baby, I say let's bring it on now! It's about fucking time.

Leave the US and you really start to wonder what they put in our middle and lower class water supply -- all those billions of bottles of Poland Spring, or the Hudson Watershed -- or add to our McDonald's menus and Happy Meals (McDonalds strong in every quarter of 2008, with double-digit growth in operating income and "return of $5.8 billion to shareholders through shares repurchased and dividends paid, including a 33% increase in the quarterly cash dividend to $0.50 per share for the fourth quarter – bringing our current annual dividend rate to $2.00 per share". Time to add McDonald's to my Starbucks holdings!) to keep 99% of Americans so tame.

I mean, did you really believe that it was the sheer force of the American Dream that kept all those people in line -- you in line --, thinking that if they didn't complain, they, too, might get to be fabulously rich like the people who run the companies for which they work, but never, ever see, except in the quarterly reports?

C'mon, admit it, it's true. That and the endless stream of credit card offers with 0% interest for 6 months for balance transfers. It was like getting gas at the dentist's office! The no down payment mortgage offers from on high. I mean, they wouldn't offer me a mortgage if I weren't really going to be able to pay it, right? This is America. Every family their own home, and AAA mortgage ratings. It has to be solid.

Pop!

Hey, was that the .com bubble? No. That burst a few years ago. Damn -- wait a minute! What's this bubblegum pink slip? What? Wait! I need that job! I have a wallet full of credit cards loaded with medical bills, mortgage payments, gas purchases for the car, my student loan payments, and all that stuff I bought at the mall and Circuit City -- the stuff the president told me to buy after 911, remember, you know, to keep the economy strong? -- to pay.

So, I propose we focus on the newest class: the nouveau riche. What do you think?

They didn't ever get it. See, that's why "riche" is in the name of their class. They are the reductionist class; let's take the money and forget those old values. Who needs them, anyway [Ed. note: read D.H. Lawrence's Women Inlove for the answer]. Or, if they do, that's their problem. Tant pis and let them eat cake. Ha ha ha! Peels of silvery laughter.

Marie Antoinette had her excuses. She was young and sheltered. But, let's leave everyone's head on, shall we?

Like, why in hell are we so polite with those strip-mining our salary potential and local, state and national tax base? Sh, it's a secret, but you know the property values in the newspapers of affluent communities, the ones that tell you how much that monstrosity with a water view, indoor lap pool, in-law suite, caretaker and nanny quarters, multiple garage and state of the art home gym and theater and billiard and Xbox 360 and Wii rooms went for? Don't tell anyone, but those aren't the real prices paid. Those are the declared prices. The ones negotiated for the property taxes. The market value was much higher, and paid in cash above the declared value for the mortgage.

It was common knowledge in my old home town. You should have seen how upset people got when it was announced that the taxes hadn't been reassessed in, oh, at least a generation and maybe it was time to send the tax assessor around. Vacations were extra long that year.

"My [bonus] money, down the drain for things no one needs, like public education. Like I need that when I take my kids to the most elite pre-kindergarten in town in our twin, armored, blacked-out minivans. Like their kids would actually stand a chance of getting into Groton and Harvard if we threw our money their way. Let their parents make what I do. How presumptuous of my architect to think that her child deserves what ours do -- oh! Hello! Please, make yourself comfortable in the office while I give the housekeeper her instructions, and remind me to talk to you about the dog room and automatic door. We'll need plenty of storage for her things and a sink. I'll be right back."

The pre-kindergarten that virtually ensures entry into the right private schools and colleges. The one that young mothers pretending to be in playgroups for their babies' emotional and social development are actually there to engage in espionage and sabotage to make sure the other babies won't be chosen over theirs.

It's a vicious, vicious world out there, and heaven knows the competition is just awful. Thank God we all use Huggies and Pampers with tape closures now. Much safer than diaper pins in some circles. Now, there was that push toward ecologically friendly cotton clothe diapers... an effort to bring those pins back, after all?

Meanwhile, the rents were exactly what was announced in the agencies -- forget the papers, you wouldn't want to live in those --, and were a fortune for nothing. You can rent a whole house in Moosesucks for half my rent in Greenwich on a sort of 2-bedroom railroad flat in downtown, next to one of the PJ's. If we'd only needed one bedroom, that would have made it a much nicer apartment. As it was, it was a kindness to them not to invite any of my son's friends parents over. I'm still looking for the 18th century or early 19th century English novel with the paragraph about social equality being measured in china and silver sets, and never inviting someone who did not have at least what you did, and never less. Unless it was the pastor and his wife. They shouldn't have as much, or be able to put out as good a table, anyway, unless it was a very tolerable living, indeed.

But of course you're right; who'd want to live here? I do.

Solidarity.

I wondered when, or if, the day would come when this word would make the press in the USA. To be frank, I certainly didn't think, only 6 years ago, that it would be this soon. Even middle school kids use this word with remarkable frequency and ease here in France, la soldarité, d'être solidaire.

When we were first living here and Sam was playing soccer still in Rosny sur Seine with the kids from the Val Fourré. It's hardly an upper middle class sport here, and we had been warned before our move, and by virtue of being us and American, we attracted a fair amount of interest. Sam didn't speak French yet, that first year, and he went to school in Paris (ridiculous, now that I think about it. Sort of). One afternoon that first fall, a boy whose own parents had emigrated from Northern Africa came up to me and asked if it were true that we were American. I said it was. He was impressed -- the United States of America still makes people dream here, even when Bush was in the White House --, and he asked me if we liked it here. I said that we did. So, he asked me what the biggest difference was. I knew this wasn't the sort of kid to want an answer in multiple-paragraphs, but there was so much to say.

I looked at him and thought quickly about the things he would understand most immediately, the ones that made the most difference in his life, and my own, and I said that the biggest difference is that in France basic human needs are met by the government, instead of relying on the employer to do so, when employment is very precarious in the US because employment law protects the employer, unemployment benefits are quickly run through, and jobs are not always easy for everyone to find. I gave the example of universal, government-provided health care, la Sécu. I also mentioned the lack of vacation time, making it hard for families to spend much time together. Time up. He nodded.

"Ils ne sont pas solidaires aux States," he squinted up at me against the evening sun, nodded again, then turned and ran back down to the playing field to join the others.

Now, granted, the Parti Socialiste makes it its life's work to teach this sort of vocabulary to those most in need of what society offers the average and the least among its members through the government here. It's also no coincidence that the communists hold power in the poorest immigrant communities, although these political figures are not "commie reds"; they are people who believe in the economic and political philosophy of Karl Marx, and they haven't really been very realistic about the failure of the biggest experiment in putting his ideas into practice, nor about from where money comes, but there's a reason for this. A good reason: we can't all be rich and secure, so we had best be just and secure.

Maintaining extremes does seem to have a way of maintaining a juster and larger middle. Can anyone figure a way around that, please?

Meanwhile, I am enjoying watching my fellow Americans back home come to terms with what it really means to fight an Enlightenment revolution, and not just what we were taught in elementary school.
....

Shave and a haircut, two trees

Linden trees, left and right

not done and almost done

It's February vacation, or just past it. Time to prune the linden trees.

This ritual in the garden takes place every two to three years. Audouin used to do it, but I have taken over the task, because he works hard, and because I can.

Why do we do this? Because if we don't, the trees will grow taller and taller, until they dwarf the house completely and block all sunlight from the top terrace and the inside of the house. Since all but two of our windows face the terrace, this would not be acceptable. They were planted as ornamental lindens, with a nice round top, one on either side of the terrace; part of that one-two symmetry that is all over the garden. So, every couple years when I am back from skiing, I get out the ladders, the chainsaw, a long extension cord, I and cut the branches off at their bases, the clumpy ends of the main branches. These will sprout new, supple branches in a matter of weeks to form a new canopy of diminutive proportions, providing a sheltered nesting place for some of our garden's birds.

This actually works very well, too, that it happens to be the linden tree pruning year because if we ever get the work done on the outside of the house, I will be completely turning over the old lawn, ordering a delivery of real, good topsoil and planting my lawn.

Again.

The delayed leafing out on smaller branches will help the grass to come in.

Again.

Sam came up from parking his scooter at the bottom of the garden and stopped to talk to me, up in my tree.

"How was your day?" His first back since his bacs blancs and two weeks of vacation.

"Sucked." It's automatic. "Oh! Do you remember that I said that I got my history and geography bac blanc back the Friday before vacation? Well," he didn't give me time to answer, "I didn't. I was sure that I had, and that I had a bad grade -- the 6 [they are graded out of 20, and single digits are all too common] that I thought I got? I didn't. She handed them back today."

"How did you do?"

"A 9. I was really happy." Only in France. "That's like a 12 on the bac." 12 on the bac. A good grade, believe it or not. There is no such thing as grade inflation here. It's more like grade depression. If he's happy, I'm happy.

"Did you give your notes to your teachers?" I had had him write notes of apology for his less than bright and shiny attitude in class to his teachers, all of them. He wrote it a week before vacation and then did nothing with it until I insisted last night. It was a good note, too. I decided that it was time to teach a lesson in the powerful and seemingly magic effect of changing one's own behavior and seeing how that impacts a relationship. If his teachers are more than annoyed with him, it's not entirely their fault for failing to appreciate him.

"Yeah."

"Did any of them read it in front of you?"

"No, but Madame Martin told Madame Foubert [the head teacher] about it."

"And? Did Madame Foubert seem pleased?"

"Yeah. And if you don't believe me that I did it, I still have the one for my math teacher in my bag because I didn't have math today, and I think Madame Foubert is going to mention it to you."

"Sam, see, you can trust me from time to time, and come back out here and help me get all these branches down to the burning pile."

Strike one up for the mother. Eat a little shit now, eat far less later.

A few minutes later, it was nearly the Moosesucks Chainsaw Massacre. The ladder slipped, the chainsaw running and weighing heavy in one hand. The other flew out to grab the nearest thing, and I edged my hip into the closest tree branch.

"Sam? Sam, can you come here please as fast as you can?" I tried to sound calm so that Audouin would not panic, helpless in his sickbed (we'll get to that). Sam's face appeared in the panes of the window at the door closest to the computer. He looked at me up on my ladder. I suppose I looked just fine up there on my ladder in the tree. I was trying pretty hard to do just that. If you don't worry, nothing bad can happen to you. Right?

"Sam, please come very quickly. The ladder is falling." He scowled. He heard me. I saw him pass the living room window, moving at a very relaxed pace as I clung to the tree, trying to hold the ladder in place and not drop the chainsaw, 2 meters up in the air. He appeared at the living room door. Why he couldn't have just come out the other door I will never understand.

"What, Mom?"

"I said that the ladder is falling, and I need you to come here as fast as you can and help me." He loped across the terrace. The other day, he was complaining to his grandmother in the US about his friends not going out and sometime later, he was back at it, "Grandma was right," he said, "the French are blasé."

"Blasé?"

"Yeah, Grandma said it, and it's true." Sam, you might say, has become very French.

"Quickly, Sam." I was getting impatient, and I could feel the ladder slipping millimeter by millimeter. Or, maybe he wanted me to fall?

You didn't think of that, did you?

Nah. Couldn't be. I have the great ideas and listen to his stories about the latest fresh pair of Nike Air Force 1's on eBay.

....

Gone a fishin', the survivors

It was an experience neither the four remaining fish from the leaking basin or I is likely soon to forget.

I went into the kitchen and got the strainer I use for draining steamed spinach and returned to locate my prey. Well, not prey, really. The fish I needed to move from the basin to a trash can. Well, not a trash can really. Not now, anyway, now that it is home to the fish that survived the Great Cold and the low water levels of January. It's a fish can now. With a concrete block to offer them pathetic shelter.

They really didn't appreciate my lunging attacks, pinning them in the depths of the silty mud at the bottom of the pond-in-a-basin, which is practically all that is left as the remaining water drains below the mudflats.

I got the first one, and it lay there in the muck in my strainer. It looked really dead. I stared at it, and then I realized that I was holding it in the air, out of the water. I was killing the fish. I plunged it back into what was left of the water, trying neither to lose it, nor to lose it. It got a second to breathe, and I high-finned him to the watering can I had filled with basin water.

Well, that went fairly well, I thought to myself, perspiring faintly, my heart-rate somewhat elevated. I prepared to get the next two, watching the proceedings from what they thought was a safe spot behind the reeds, next to the moss-covered old stone sink Audouin hauled up from the bottom of the garden years ago and placed in the old fountain, thinking it would make a nice planter for aquatic plants. I went and got my pruning shears to cut out some of the reeds. I was going to win this one. Me 4, fish 0.

I got them.

There was one last fish to find in all that churned up silt. Bubbles. The give-away. Follow the bubbles. There, there very near the same spot by the reeds, was a shiny patch of glittering pink-orange gold.

A-ha.

He was playing dead.

Or, was he playing dead? Had I killed him? The shock of seeing his comrades, his fellow survivors go like that, after narrowly escaping death already, was it more than he could bear? I didn't give him time to think.

I plunged my strainer -- having lost all sense of delicacy and propriety; the others were already swimming about in the tin watering can, so how much damage could I have done to them? -- and drew it out. He lay there on his side. I whipped him around and dropped him in with the others, got my bowl and started patiently filling it, avoiding the silty muck, to make a nice level of water in the fish can. I poured them in. It took some time for the water to clear, but there they were. Safe and sound, if a little shaken.

Trust would have to be reestablished.

If the cats knew, they probably wouldn't come here.

Speaking of which, our neighbors have not come by either to thank me, nor to give me news of their cat. I left the vet's office in peace today. I was also too embarrassed to tell them that my neighbors hadn't thought it worth their trouble to say thank you. I hope it doesn't mean that they had to decide to have him put down. Such a beautiful cat.

This nearly spring-like, sunny morning, no one was visible at the bottom of the fish can. They were all hiding behind the concrete block, which Audouin thought I was a little daft to put in there.

They like it. It offers them privacy.

I went back inside and got the fish food. One stuck his head out and came to see. He sniffed at it, swallowed a bite, and turned to head back behind the concrete block. I waited. I know them.

A couple of seconds later, he swam back out, accompanied by a second fish, who swam up to eat a bite, turned and headed back behind the concrete block. I waited again. He'd be back with another. They pass the word. Once the third was drawn out by the food and the reassurance, they got the fourth to come out, too. I went to share my fish behavior observations with Audouin.

"J'ai entendu une grenouille croacer ce matin." I had taken the BMW in to have the hood repainted and the front bumber and right fog light repaired, the last from my run-in with a wild boar in Dordogne three summers ago already, and ridden my bicycle back.

"Ah bon? Tu en es sur?" He could have been mistaken in his sick-bed delirium.

"Oui," he croaked. I didn't believe him. I hadn't seen or heard a thing, but I didn't need to disappoint a sick man, who sincerely hoped that now I would remove the reeds and muck if I thought that the frogs had come out of hibernation. He liked my fish story. He thinks I am sort of cute and amusing for caring what carp do in a trash can, or anywhere else.

"Et, je pense qu'il y a deux qui portent des oeufs. Elles ont des ventres," I made a gesture to indicate roundness at the sides, "gonflés. Maybe we're going to have some babies very soon. Speaking of which, you probably didn't get my message, but the neighbor had her baby Thursday." He winced. I thought he might evince a little more interest. She is his patient.

"Boy or -- oh, we knew. Boy."

"Léandre. Like in Greek mythology."

"Audrey est enceinte aussi." Just what this jealous old crone needed to know, my last sister-in-law is expecting their second, her third. Add that to my personal trainer's wife and Peggy at the gym, too.

Just give me baby fish to repopulate the fish basin once we get it repaired, and I'll name them all.

....

Now you see them, now you... don't

No workers today. Audouin warned me last week, saying Joaquim had mentioned that they'd be gone "2 or 3 days" this week, which in Joaquim speak equals a week and a half. I had asked Georges at the end of Friday, and he had looked very surprised.

"Il ne m'a rien dit."

"Oh. Alors, vous serez ici probablement lundi."

"Oui, je pense."

Non.

Tomorrow, back up in the linden trees, if I can get the chain back on my new chainsaw, and make it stay.
....

Arson in the garden

V dolls

they say that when water freezes, it increases by 9% in volume, cracking the fatigued rock into which it seeps.

when disappointment and disillusion seep into the cracks of a broken heart, they increase thusly in volume, bursting the heart in anger.

we are told
"the past is the past",
let it go;
let sleeping dogs lie.
forget it.

but this is merely a convenience
for those who prefer not to do the work.

there is no past
there is only an eternal
-- and eternally growing --
present
filled with that past.

so, you don't forget it.
as long as the pain is still there,
you can't.
as long as you can't approach it,
as long as you can't touch it,
there is no end.

make it for yourself.
it's nothing.

not if you don't let it be.

it's hatred.
as long as you can't feel my pain and revulsion,
as long as you don't ask my pardon,
as long as you don't tell me you are sorry,

it's a callous affront to me.

save yourself by saying
it's nothing.
protect yourself
by keeping your feelings to yourself
and showing me only the ones that prove
it's nothing.

you have continued the relationship,
in the forms it has taken
since it began.
i never had one with her
other than as the object
of her hatred.

the place to put the blame.
the resentment.
the loathing.

she took what was not hers.
you gave her what was not hers.
and,she blamed me
for it was mine.

she did not blame herself.

she called me by my full name.
the better to identify me,
the she-who-must-be-named.
her.
that one.
the one who will carry full responsibility
for the bad I have done.
the evil I am
in the sickness I will not own.

if I cannot have what I want,
you will not either.

i dress you in a thong
and the string with which to hang you.
i burn your feet, your hair.
i pierce your breasts, your uterus, your heart.
your eyes.
the cross.
i make you cry.
i slit your wrists
and make you bleed.

i do not have the courage to do this to myself.
i pretend only.

i hate you.

my children do not know that I do this.
they sleep.
i sit here with my hatred
and my pens,
my red and my black pens,
my lighter and sewing pins, and
my child's baby dolls,
while she sleeps.

or,
does she not sleep
but watch me
as i do this
to you?

i pierce you.
i burn you.
i make you cry.

i am crying.
i make you cry.
i am.
i make you me.
i make him see me in you.

i hate you.
me
hate.

she hung them on my gate.

my children know I hate you.
i tell them I hate you.
hate you.
you are crazy,
not I.

i did not sit and stare at the wall,
smoking cigarette after cigarette,
hating you.

i hated you.
and I called you,
always,
by your full name.

i name you.

you don't know her.
the good things.
there are good things.

i don't care about
the good things.
i can't see
the good things.
i can't see you
see them.

i'll grow long claws to protect you.

you swore beneath your breath
and let me hurt.
you did not claw.
or,
you did not show me
that you did.

we can't have children,
you said.
we wouldn't agree on how to parent them,
you charged.

yet,
you had children with her,
she
who wished me this.
who did this,
while they slept.

you did not help me
and you hurt me,
and i began
to hate you.

i don't want
to hate you.
help me not
to hurt.


....

O CAT!, the suite

It turned out that Sam had seen this cat very often before, when he comes home on his scooter, he sees it racing up the lane below. So have I, now that he reminds me of where I have seen him.

I know what is wrong with him, although I don't know his fate.

I called as the vet's office said I could, and I learned little. They were still examining him and doing tests between scheduled appointments.

"Il est du coin?" I asked.

"Oui. Ils doivent être vos voisins."

"Ils sont dans la même rue?" I felt like I was asking for State secrets.

"Oui."

"Quel numéro?" I must have been pushing it.

"Le 14."

"Mais ce sont les voisins à côté, les X!" She confirmed that it was the very family named.

"Vous préférez peut-être que je vous laisse les contacter?" She said that, yes, they did prefer to wait to contact the owners until they had more conclusive information to offer them.

"Je pensais seulement qu'ils pourraient apprécier de savoir que leur chat est trouvé. Ils se font peut-être des soucis pour lui," I hesitated, to give her the opporunity to say, "Yes, of course they might like to know that. Why don't you go ahead and let them know," but she didn't. To cover my intent, I picked right back up, "mais, bien sur que je vous laisserai gérer." They must know what they are doing.

I mean, what if I went to the neighbors, told them I had found their cat injured and taken it to my vet across town, that he seems to have been injured fairly badly, and they jumped in the car and raced over and -- what? -- insisted on taking him away in his condition?

Better leave it to them. The poor thing howled in pain at every right turn and curve in the road.

"Je vous rappelerai un peu plus tard pour avoir plus de nouvelles." She said that would be fine. I waited an hour and a half to learn that the X-ray had showed a fracture to his hip.

"Ca a du être une voiture," she said, referring to our earlier speculation. She had wondered if he had fallen into our garden when I told her how difficult it is to get in from the street. It is entirely walled in, and the cats have to jump through the metal pickets in the wall and gate. It didn't seem likely that he had done that in his condition. It now didn't seem likely, from his X-ray, that he had fallen.

"Mais, il y avait du sang. Qu'a-t-il pour éxpliquer le sang?

"C'est assez important," she said, referring the gravity of his injuries. "Il a du essayer de rentrer chez lui mais ne pouvait continuer et est resté chez vous."

"Sans doute, mais je ne sais pas comment. Ce n'est pas facile de pénétrer notre jardin de la rue." Sam told me later that there is a little hole in the fence, over near where I buried Chloé, behind the rhododendron I planted last summer, the terribly pathetic one on which they gave me at a fire sale price and that is now doing nicely, like we knew it would, over next to the wire fence between our garden and Christian's empty chicken house. That's still not an easy feat for an injured cat. Even one who has probably crossed our garden before, without my knowing it.

"Je dirai à ses propriétaires que c'est vous qui l'avez amené ici," the technician was still talking. "Ils sont en traine de venir. Ils passeront peut-être vous voir."

"Oui. Oui, dites leur, s'il vous le plait. Ils nous connaissent."

I waited for the bell to ring at the gate last evening and again today, but no one has come to tell us how he is and what they can do for him. Maybe they think I hit him and didn't have the courage to say so.

Maybe they will come this evening.

Or tomorrow.
....