Chut! Elles y sont the frogs!

A frog friend appears!

It isn't really occasion for an exclamation point, since they do appear each spring and spend the entire year living in this fish-pond-in-a-fountain, following the rhythm of their froggy lives, but I get so excited when I spot them for the first time each season. It's so reassuring.

Something we haven't scrouxed up.

I peddled back from a session with my trainer at the gym (16 km each way), collected the mail from the mailbox in the gate (Dreams of My Father arrived from the UK for the April 2 Barnard Book Club meeting) and stowed my bike in front of the kitchen window. Turning toward the basin, my eye caught movement and I heard a Plop! Then, there it was, another frog body, stretched out in mid-air, leaping from a clump of reed roots near the water's surface into the water, Plop!

They're out!

I crept around the side of the old fountain basin, toward the favorite spot in the moss below the bird bath sort of thing that Audouin left to make a fountain element for the fish, but we can't use it because the pump is too strong and it sounds more like Niagara Falls in the middle of the terrace. Our guests ask for us to turn it on and then tire very quickly of raising their voices to be heard over the falling water. There was a bright, golden-coppery glint in the sun behind the dried reeds. A frog!

How to tell you how this very simple and minor thing makes me feel on another 15° C already brilliant spring-like day, the sound of the tractor down in the field below turning over row after row of soil, preparing it for planting and the boats plying their way up and down the Seine, still visible while the trees present their buds?

I advanced as soundlessly as possible, although that probably wasn't necessary. This is the place in the old fountain where they feel safe, no matter what is going on around them. As long as they are here, sometimes a little pile of coppery and green bodies soaking up the sun on their bed of soft emerald-green moss, they think we can't see them, even as we gaze at one another. Or, they appear to gaze back at me.

Look carefully in the photo above. Can you see it? There, in the middle of the almost triangle in the center of the photo, just above the green patch of moss, there is a spot of coppery-brown, there, to the left, the two golden bulgy frog eyes.

I talked to him.

"Salut, toi. Je te vois. N'aies pas peur... n'aies pas peur. C'est moi. C'est moi."

Then, I looked over to the left of the bird bath thing, where the frogs that lept back into the water before were, and what did I see? A large, green frog, suspended in the water, holding a clump of reed roots with his front -- what do frogs have? paws? Ses pattes avants. Sam managed to make my camera's on/off button work again magically in Chamonix, so I didn't even have to reset it and miss the moment. I got him before he saw me and dove back into the safety of the roots.

He's there, looking at me, just below the little ball the neighbor's son tossed into the water the other day. Go ahead, click on the photo so that you can see it larger. He's right below the little ball, floating in the water, just to the right and below a little bit of light colored reed, sticking up out of the water. See his two little eye bulges?

"Hey, frog! Salut!" I said, not very loudly, but friendly enough, I hoped.

Shploof... he was gone.

Oooh, they are really not going to like my tearing out their home. I am going to have to invest in the costly basin I found online and pray that they figure out to hop over into it as I move their ecosystem over. If we really didn't have to repair the leak, I wouldn't do this. What's worse, the leak stops at a certain level above where the waterline presently is located, but I know that it can get worse, and we already can't see where the leak is located.

I think Florosny sells the preformed basins, too. I'll head over there in a little while. They're open again after lunch now. If not, I'll just order one online and wait for it to be delivered. I know, that would make you very happy, frogs, but...

If it were done, when 'tis done, then 'twer well
It were done quickly: If th' Assassination
Could trammel vp the Consequence, and catch
With his surcease, Successe: that but this blow
Might be the be all, and the end all.

Although I think both the frogs and I would prefer
There were no Assassination in the basin,
No Consequences save those that are happiest,
No surcease for there to be Successe, but -- yea --
That this blow to the crack in the olde fountain
Be the be all, and the end all, for all time,
So that they may continue to live in peace,
As long as peace there yet be for us all.
....

The frogs are awake!

Frog in the sprinkler

July 2006

Poor frogs.

I heard one in the grass in the old stone sink Audouin put in the fountain. I did.

I had just come up in exasperation from the burning pile, where nothing much burned and there is oh so much to burn, and I stopped by the fish-pond-in-a-fountain. I listened. I looked.

I heard.

Rustle. Rustle.

I saw.

Gentle movement in the grass just beyond the favorite mossy spot in the sun.

"I know you're there. Good morning, frogs." They speak English. They are trilingual. Some might not even speak French, having been born since my residency. Come to think of it, no one actually talked to them before my arrival, so they probably don't speak French, any of them.

The croaking that Audouin was sure that he heard two or three weeks ago from up in his sick bed was almost certainly his own voice, echoing in his feverish head.

They're going to hate what's coming. Hate it.

Imagine, giant rakes coming to tear out the trees and shrubs all around you, where you are trying to hide by a corner of your house. Then, the air that you breathe being sucked out from around you and drained away to just where, you know not. In this case, the rest of the reeds being yanked, torn out and the water siphoned off to a children's swimming pool placed next to the basin, where, eventually, some of the plants and rocks to be saved will make their way, and the frogs are hoped to find refuge.

It's a gorgeous day, by the way. 16° celcius, clear skies and the entire week is supposed to be as nice. Someone once suggested -- Hi, Tracy! If you still check in here from time to time, if I haven't bored you to tears and departure -- that I record the daily temperatures with each post.

It was a really good idea, and I regret not doing it because I could swear that the garden is a bit early this year, despite the extreme -- for Moosesucks -- winter.

Maybe I'll start now.

16° C
....

Vous aimez Piranesi?

Butterflies in the bergenia

Thank you, world, for giving me reason to want to charge my camera batteries and get outdoors.

Thank you, Joaquim, for not showing up, and letting me enjoy this in peace.

Thank you, Audouin, for leaving my motorcycle here today. Now I have to use it or feel guilty when I'd really like to have time to garden, ride my bike to the gym and work-out, develop the terrace plans, write in my blog, take pictures of plants, and take a motorcycle ride around the countryside.

Thank you -- to whomever is responsible -- for giving me all these choices. That would be the Greek chorus of my life, and me and my muses. And Audouin.

Yesterday, I gardened. I have left my beautiful Echinacea purpurea plants -- "Kim's Knee High" and "Double Pink" -- to suffer through the coldest winter in a very long time in their pots in the entry courtyard. If you don't plant echinacea in its sunny locaction, you're supposed to do it the courtesy of planting it in a northern exposure to keep it in a holding pattern. Nowhere does it say, "Leave it in its nursery pots to freeze to death in a damp, icy corner of your garden."

Nowhere.

I scratched up the soil in a couple places in the top and second terrace borders, dug out as much mint as I possibly could from the lower ones -- if you think you don't have a green thumb, may I suggest that you start with mint? You'll either be so delighted with your success that you'll move onto lilies, or be frightened away forever by its invasive tendency --, and plopped them into the sun-warmed soil, watered and watched.

The last part is useless. I have other things to do besides conduct a vigil by my echinacea.

I am praying that it is resilient and forgiving. That their roots have not been frozen beyond all hope of producing shoots and gracing me with their gorgeous flowers later this summer.

They were supposed to have been planted with the Eric Tabarly roses and a bunch of other stuff in the south-facing border against the house, but we all -- who have been reading along here -- know that the house was not finished in time to plant in November.

Nor in December.

Not even now, in March.

I am actually pulling out more of what I have planted, more still of what was planted before my arrival, and getting ready to think this out again for the hundredth time. Sure, the garden improved, but I was so unprepared.

....

The garage and the flood zone, toiture végétale
and Piranesi

Saturday morning, I went to the mairie and had the great good luck to find the mayor and my favorite adjoint mayor both in, along with the new secretary, who to my immense relief is really, really nice. When it was announced a few short months ago that the secretary would be leaving, I nearly hyperventilated. She was so friendly and accomodating, and you just never know what you'll get the next time. Well, it seems we got lucky.

I needed a copy of our plot plan to understand what was going on with the dimensions I was getting every time I went out and measured to draw the top terrace plan, which made no sense, and appears not to still. I forgot that I had it in the file for the purchase of the house. Just as well, I needed to see the mayor, anyway.

And, it's always good to stop in and chat with the local powers that be. Especially in a village this size where rumors spread like forest fires and nearly everyone has an opinion about everything and everyone else.

Our recent experiences with the contractor having been complicated and horrible enough, I wanted to at least do the garage part of our vision a little better. We'd need a building permit, and I had also read at the time they announced the leave-taking of our town hall secretary that building permits would now be decided by the CAMY, or the Communauté d'agglomération de Mantes-en-Yvelines. Never mind. It's the grouping of many of the villages around Mantes-la-Jolie with Mantes to produce a larger political and administrative entity, of which Moosesucks chose to be a part, while our neighbors across the boucle declined, preferring to group themselves with Bonnières sur Seine. I was worried that this would complicate things and make the permit more difficult and time-consuming to obtain.

Oh yee of little faith.

The mayor assurred me that this is not the case, "En fait, c'est mieux. C'est plus rapide et plus directe car avant, c'était le DDE (a government agency) qui décidait, et maintenant, c'est le CAMY directement." Oh. The adjoint mayor -- the Obama supporter -- asked, "C'est pareil aux States, ou différent?" I explained how it works in the States in 20 words or fewer, so as not to bore the poor man to death. I need his good graces.

"Et, en ce moment, il faut combien de temps pour un permis?"

"Un mois, à peu près, n'est-ce pas, Cécile?" he turned toward the new secretary. She nodded her agreement and turned to smile at me. This was going very well!

"Ah, c'est super car on a vraiment besoin du garage qui mon mari veut construire depuis si longtemps." If anyone knows we need it, it's the mairie. They see us juggling our vehicles and trying to keep them safe and out of everyone's way. Parking is a major issue in our little village, built when ox carts negotiated its thoroughfares and people actually walked in the street.

"Voulez le construire où," asked our mayor.

"En bas, derrière le grand portail conçu à cet effet." Why else install a large, automatic sliding gate, as our predecessors had done, if you don't intend to have a garage to protect the vehicles behind it? Easy, you learn that you can't build such a thing because the nonconstructible floodplain line is located well behind that gate, up about at the level of your second terrace. That's why.

The mayor went in search of the floodplain map and showed me the line drawn in red magic marker.

"Oh. Est-ce qu'il y a la possibilité de construire quelque chose de tout?" Like an open hangar to at least provide minimal shelter from the elements? He went and got the building regulations book and started to read. Not really.

I was crestfallen. As much for Audouin as for me. More.

The boat. He needs a shop in which to work on restoring it so that it looks more like this one, not the same model Molinari , but similar, and less like it does presently. This has been his dream. He wants to be able to launch it in the Seine and drive us up and down. I see us in -- oh, Corsica.



I must have looked as disappointed as I felt because I could see the mayor softening.

"On a vraiment besoin de quelque chose. Tous ces véhicules," my voice was starting to trail off into hopelessness, "Les motos, le bateau, et," I cringed, "les voitures. On nous les donne." I tried to look as apologetic as possible.

"Quelque sorte d'appentis?" I suggested meekly. Not that a lean-to was what we had in mind, but if it's good enough for 3 freezing high school kids on a winter survival expedition, it had to be better than nothing for our motorcycles at least. My mind was racing through the various possibilities we had already considered, anywhere else, and there were no feasible ones. Not one. Maybe the motorcycles in the garage up on the street -- a tight fit, for certain --, but then where would the dryer go, and the bicycles, and the garden products, and the tools?

"Ca nous arrangerait que vous construisiez quelque chose, avec les appartements en face, vous n'aurez plus le droit de vous garer dans l'impasse." They are putting three public housing units in the old school that used to be the mairie back when our house still had a large carriage door on the street and the yard behind, and windows on the street side, before it had the little addition Joaquim says they aren't going to cover in chaux unless we give up some contract items. The way it looks in the enlarged post card view from the turn of the century (the previous one) I found the other day in the mairie. Never would I thought I would regret their closing the school 3 years ago.

He and the adjoint mayor looked thoughtful. I stayed quiet.

"On fermera les yeux. La seule chose est si un voisin s'en plaint." I looket over at our neighbor, the adjoint mayor.

"Et le voici, notre voisin. Et qu'est-ce vous en dites?"

"Je vous donne mon accord."

Marché conclu. I could have some kind of open shed. I took that for the consolation it was and bid my adieus, waving, as I walked back up the street, to the village's newest oldest lovers, Yvette, my friend with three teeth, two goats, and one dog and one cat, the one who lives in the caravan the cantonnier helped her to obtain to replace the hodge-podge trailer-shed affair that burnt to the ground Christmas a year ago, along with the last remaining photos of her deceased husband in her possession, and her new love. The husband might be up in the cemetery and his photos reduced to phlogoston, but she has a new man to warm her nights.

Nearly home, I saw my neighbor, the one who is renovating the house they bought from the daughter of the old man who lost his wife a few years ago and then died himself two or three back. I could only imagine what this young couple with a toddler faced when they moved in. I have since seen what he is doing in detail. We two can (and do) talk for hours and hours. It was destiny that placed him in his passage door just as I walked by, feeling victorious that I had managed to get a lean-to accord from the unofficial negotiations with the local heads of state.

I saw the new baby, two weeks and two days old. I saw the progress in the bathroom, and looking out the window, he pointed to the new roof over between the two higher parts of the rear of the house, containing the bathrooms, in one of which we were standing. The one with the bathtub and sink. The other would have the toilet and stuff. He has replaced the undulating fiberglass roofing with asphalt tiles, "C'est là où je vais installer un toit végétale."

"Toit végétale?" I couldn't pretend to look like I knew what that was. He took me downstairs to show me online, and I felt a jolt of electricity run through me, creative juices beginning to stream. I nearly jumped off the couch.

"Mais c'est parfait! Si je ne peux faire qu'un appentis, imaginez une structure tout en bois, peinte en noir, très foncé, des lattes en bois entre les poteaux pour protéger contre le mauvais temps, et un grand toit plat, qui ne se voit presque pas, ni du chemin, ni d'en haut, tellement ça disparaitrait dans le paysaye!" A roof covered with low plants, softening the effect of the quantity of roof we'd need to shelter as many of our vehicles as possible. His eyes sparkled with delight, triumphal delight, while his wife watched as we sparked ideas, like two wizards of bricolage and architecture, playing with our magic wands. The baby had gone back to sleep, and the older boy was playing at the coffee table between us.

"Je pourrais même le marier avec la pergole de vignes de raisins, la cour "découpée" de la structure des écrans, des "trous" dans le toit au-dessus, même un atelier cloisonné à l'intériuere -- "

I don't think either of us could smile any more broadly. He put a book of scientific architectural structural method from the Renaissance into my hands, "Je l'ai acheté dans un brocante. J'achète pleins de bouquins comme ça," he explained. "Vous aimez Piranesi?"

Oui, j'aime beaucoup Piranesi.

"J'aime beaucoup les dessins de Piranesi."

I have a neighbor who works in something to do with electricity, who in converting the motorcycle he bought to ride around and take photos to a Bobber, loves Piranesi's architectural renderings and prefers nothing to researching innovative and ecologic building techniques on the Internet.

I can almost be happy in Moosesucks.

I'm going to check on my echinea.
....

Screauxed

A demonstration of manly prowess

Oh, how to understand these things?

Okay, so it doesn't really work, not if you pronounce "eaux" like the French do -- "oh" --, but it was still funny and really did monté la morale (mine) to find the following email correspondence between two American, progressive, intelligent, funny lawyers in my inbox when I finally turned on my laptop today (I have been stowing it away more and more, to recover more of life, like I discovered was possible in Chamonix with WiFi in the hotel salon only):

First lawyer: French contract work.

http://www.thesisyphusjournals.com/2009/03/au-moins-il-y-de-soleil.html


Second lawyer: So, the contractor is trying to screaux them?


If only you knew how often he talks about sex. Yesterday's exchange was particularly low-brow and uncalled for, especially for a man capable of reciting Cyrano and mixing pretty wonderful colors in paint and chaux.

I sometimes wonder what he does with his days, since whenever he comes here, he mostly talks, and when he picks up the phone to take on an issue, it is interminable. Ask Audouin. He knows now, too.

If all of his contracts are anything like this one, then it's clear that he spends his days running around spinning his web, rather than applying what he knows, which would be, needless to say, a far superior use of his time, but, having interested himself in the problem of removing the reeds from the old fountain and contemplating the presence of the fâcheuse water in the fish-pond-in-a-fountain, there followed this prélude to the latest clearing of the clouds of incomprehension:

Joaquim: What we need is to drill a hole in the side to drain it.

Long-suffering client: But look how thick the fountain wall is, you'd need a really long bit.

Joaquim: Oh, they come in quite long lengths, like this [he opened his palms, facing one another, to indicate something approximating the width of the fountain wall]. Even this [moving his hands farther apart with the unmistakable grin of a male thinking of his own desired plumbing].

LS client: Oh, no! Don't get started on that. Georges, stop him now before he really gets going. [Georges turns from where he is squatting at the corner of the house, chiseling away the old concrete sidewalk from the base of the house. They didn't think to bring the wondrous jack hammer. We both approach Georges, Joaquim trying to get him in on the act, I trying to distract him and get Georges to do better.]

Georges: What, cousin?

Joaquim: I was telling her that masonry bits come in quite long lengths --

Georges: Yes, that's true. [C'mon, Georges, surely you can do better than that to get him to stop.]

Joaquim: And I told her that they make them this [he opened his hands again in that gesture immature males of the species use to indicate male endowment of the non financial type] long. [He could barely contain his mirth].

LS client: Georges, really, stop him.

Joaquim: I'm not even the worst or the fastest to talk about sex. [He wasn't going to be stopped. He never is once he gets going on one of his favorite topics. My contractor, for God's sake. You're not in the United States anymore.] You know [undecipherable]? When he was in New York, [undecipherable] gave an interview [something about film, directing] --

LS client: [Nearly to herself] Oh, Roman, Roman Polanski. Right.

Joaquim: And he said how necessary sex was to him, orgies. It emptied him, let him get rid of his excess energy, distraction, get down to concentrate properly on his work. [No such]

LS client: [Weakly, walking away] Victor Hugo. Like Victor Hugo. [Anything to stay on an historic, intellectual and literary plain].

Why, God? Why?

Just think of all the layers of inappropriateness, deception or ineptitude, disappointment and dissimulation. It boggles the mind.

When I need to raise my flagging spirits by thinking something somewhat uncharitable (but true), I let my thoughts return to what Sam says anytime we see someone in an ad or on TV who resembles nothing more than a Cro-magnon, "Mom, doesn't he sort of remind you of -- what's the name of our contractor?"



[Sigh of near contentment. I love Youtube.]

I've been thinking. It would be more like "scroux", as in, "So, the contractor is trying to scroux them?"
....

Au moins il y a de soleil

The base of the house

When did I say it? Or, how many times did I say it? I know I said it here, but the actual words, the ones that say Oh, we'll get the work done, but it will be less for more, they must be in another post, of which there are 50.

We will get it done, but done will be a renegotiation of the meaning of "done", and it will be less for more, but don't worry, it isn't we who will lose. No. It's the contractors who have already lost. That's what Joaquim says.

"Je vais te monter la morale," he said. Go for it, raise my spirits. I kept right on bringing the heel of my Wellies down on the sidewalk, where Georges was sitting in the sun with his back to the wall of the neighbor's garage just a few feet away, clumps of dirt and grass falling away from the tread in the rubber soles.

I laughed with precious little mirth, looking at the bits of wet dirt and grass while Joaquim danced next to me, trying to get into my line of site. You see, he refuses that you be angry with him. He's right and he's good. The bad guy did this to us, and we're all suffering now, but no one as much as he and his workers.

"Je vais te monter la morale. Tu sais comment? Tu sais?" No, but I was going to hear it. "Parce qu'aucun artisan n'aurait pu faire ce que j'ai fait ici pour ce que vous avez payé. Si on appelle n'importe quel expert, il vous dirait que vous nous devez d'argent."

"Non!" popped out of my mouth. No one could tell us that we owed him more money. We had signed a contract, written with a verbal understanding of what those nearly worthless words meant; we owed them no more than we had paid. But, that wasn't what he meant.

"Si, ce qu'on a déjà fait vaut deux fois le prix que vous aurez payé." Figuratively, it could be argued that we "owed" him any additional amount within certain difficult to establish boundaries, having to do with margins of profit.

"Ce que vous voulez c'est plus d'argent."

"Mais non! Je ne veux pas plus d'argent. On élimine quelques postes et vous aurez l'essentiel --"

"Ou nous payons plus cher pour tout avoir. Vous ne voulez pas forcément plus d'argent, mais de prendre les sommes contractées attribuées aux autres postes et les mettre dans l'essentiel du projet: le ravalement." He nodded; I had gotten it. He didn't necessarily want more money; he wants to spend less time on the job for the total of the contract, and we can decide what we'll give up to get the most important to us. Less is more.

"J'en ai déjà parlé avec mon mari. Très bien, vous ne faites pas la petite maison, et vous faites la chaux sur la partie plus récente de la maison." That's where it all began today. I finally understood that he really did not intend to apply the chaux to the newer part of the house.

This had gone through several phases of comprehension. The first, which was that it would be stripped to the structure, just like the older part of the house. The second, which was that this was not actually possible -- I had misunderstood the intention -- because it is not plaster but cement, and that the cement would receive a hydrofuge treatment to prevent the cement from absorbing more water, and then be covered with the natural stucco (chaux). I had asked if it really were possible to simply apply the chaux directly on the cement base, and he had said that it was. I remember that conversation, proof of my understanding, perfectly.

The third was today's interpretation of what he had intended that I understand and believed that both my husband and I had fully grasped back at the time of our first "coming to terms", namely, that he would be applying only a chaux-based patina to the newer part of the house so that it would be the same color as the rest of it, but would not have the same actual appearance.

"Vous n'allez pas appliquer la chaux sur cette partie de la maison?"

"Mais non. Je vous l'ai expliqué quand on a parlé de la couleur de la maison," and he went on to tell me precisely when he had told us and how.

"Non, vous avez dit que vous allez appliquer une patine partout, tout autour de la maison pour que les différences en couleur d'un support à un autre soient minimisées, mais vous avez très clairement dit que vous allez appliquer la chaux par dessus du ciment. Je me souviens car je m'étonnais, et je vous ai posé des questions très précises. Alors, c'est un liquide la patine?"

"Oui, à la base de chaux."

"Mais c'est un liquide, comme l'eau, et pas de chaux?"

"Oui."

"Alors, cela donne la couleur mais pas l'aspect de chaux, comme partout sur la reste de la maison?"

"Oui. Ca n'aura pas le même aspect." We arrive, at long last, at mutual understanding, and I didn't like it. In fact, I nearly lost it. I did my very best to stay calm. I have already broken every rule I followed in practice in the States because nothing was respected, and there is no such thing, really, as residential architecture here. There is the tyrany of the trades.

Of course, I was right that he had said that he would not be removing the surface treatment on that part of the house because (first (bad) reason) it was cement, not stucco like the rest of the house, and so it was part of the structure of the wall, and then (second (more justifiable) reason) it was not damaged, and (real reason) the contract sum was too small to pay them adequately for the time they'd have to spend on it, so they were whittling away parts of the work assumed in the contract to stop the flood of financial damage to themselves they are claiming to suffer because he wouldn't now be basically saying that they will do it, if we drop some of the other work from the contract but maintain the contract sum, were it not a finnagle from the begining.

It's about money.

Georges and José, he says, haven't received salary for 2 months. They are living, he nodded toward Georges, on credit. You are merely not receiving some of your "toys", he said.

"Nous ne sommes pas des gâtés," I retorted, flaring back up. We are not spoiled, and these are not toys. This is a real and very important, long-anticipated and saved-for renovation of our home.

My husband works 13 hour days at the hospital, I shot back, which are not counted in his salary calculations, and he works nights on duty that are paid a song, and, sometimes -- like the Saturday afternoon that he'll do this week -- not at all. The work might have been underestimated, it might not be enough to cover their salaries, but we did not do the estimate nor write the contract, they did, or Eric did, but Joaquim allowed us to make a first and a second payment against it. If it weren't enough, and he knew it, then he should have refused the contract. He should have, in other words, called Eric out for what he was in the story, and said that we needed to start all over again, regardless of having a bank loan approved based on it.

"C'est l'histoire typique. On l'entend tout le temps. On sousestime le contrat pour démander plus d'argent plus tard." I looked up from the clumps of wet grass and dirt and straight into his eyes. It's a form of blackmail. Sign 'em up cheap, then tell them it cost more than expected and they'll have to pay more to get it done.

Here, he took umbrage. This was not the case, he argued. He had not underestimated the job to get us to sign, figuring he'd get it later. Eric had written a load of garbage on the contract, he insisted again, which he never saw until it was already signed, the loan for it approved, and I, the smiling client, was waiting for him to show and get going on the work.

"Ca c'est moi," he said. I was kicking the sole of my Wellies against the railing on the other side of the street now, listening. "Je suppose que je n'aime pas dire des choses comme ça contre les gens, j'essaye de l'éviter --"

"Et, comme ça, vous occasionnez encore plus de problèmes pour tout le monde. Personne n'aime dire les choses désagréables. Tout le monde est maintenant déçu, frustré, perdant. Ce projet aurait pu être un vrai plaisir pour nous tous, mais il laissera toujours un mauvais goût dans la bouche de chacun d'entre nous."

"Sauf vous. Vous n'aurez pas perdu. Vous aurez gagné une très belle préstation pour votre maison, mais nous aurons perdu d'argent."

"Vous auriez du dire depuis le début que vous n'avez pas fait le devis, que le coût du projet fut réellement plus élevé que la somme du contrat, et que vous ne etiez pas dans la capacité d'honorer le contrat car, quoi qu'il y en soit, nous n'aurons pas tout ce qui fut promis dans le contrat, qui est depuis un certain temps à la poubelle, figurativement, j'entends. J'ai su depuis longtemps que vous nous ameniez ici. C'était une evidence." I saw Georges smile, despite himself, because he knew. We all knew that we knew. It's a terrible business.

It won't be just the application of the chaux on the "petite maison" that will go in order to get the entire house done properly. Why, I asked him, would I ever have come to him, put up with all of this, gone through all the samples if we had only ever intended to redo some parts of the house? Why would he even have ever taken the care that he had had we not intended to do the whole thing? It was obvious. He knew it, and he knew that I did.

For ages, I had been saying that there was a reason that the work on the chaux had stopped short of the newer part. It was the arm twister. One explanation is the one Joaquim preferred that I understand: that it would never be done like the rest of the house. But, the other one is the true one: we both knew that there was no question but that it had to be for the work to be a success, and that if he were to do it, he would need more money, or not to do other pieces of the contract. That is why it was left along with the other pieces of the contract: for the final negotiation of what we drop to get it the way it must be.

Bad guy? I don't know. Maybe Eric is. Maybe you are only an accidental bad buy.

Bad method? Yeah. How much more would it take to get it all, Joaquim? Should we give it to you? Or, should we find someone else, or do it ourselves?

Better method? Be up front. Say what things cost and for how much you'll do them, and then get them done.

"Au moins il y a de soleil," said Georges, a smile forming on his lips. I think sometimes that he would do things differently, if he had a say. I hope so, anyway. I like Georges. It was a sort of peace-offering.

"Celui-là, il se contente du soleil," said Joaquim.

"Au moins il y a de soleil, Georges," I nodded back. I am determined to take it. What else can I do?

Call a lawyer.
....

Credit nightmare

I woke up after Audouin had left, thinking hours had passed, but pushing myself over to face the alarm clock, I saw that it read 8:30 am. How could he have only left half an hour before? The house was quiet. Sam started late again today, and I rolled back over to wait for his alarm clock to wake me up. What woke me up instead was a panic attack.

"Damn! My Citibank card. Damn. It's the 15th, and I didn't pay it." I was out of bed in a single tick of the heart and downstairs without seeing the stairs go by. The dogs watched me as I bounded for the computer that was already on, the one we can't turn off, or risk never being able to turn on again. I called up a browser window and typed, "Citicards.com".

Nothing. An error message. I did it again. Damn, damn, what was wrong? Every page had a little exclamation point in a yellow square. I hit the ISP window; "Se connecter" showed. I hit that and decided to go pee. Judgement had surely been passed already on my account, and I had already begged forgiveness back in February, succeeding in having my interest rate lowered and my credit line brought back up to its previously dizzying and generous heights.

I'd told the truth; I'd gotten carried away in the Obama campaign and planning an inaugural "grassroots" ball for the MyBO folks in Washington, and with several hundred emails a day, I had lost track of the reminder to pay my January bill on time, and it had cost me my interest rate and my credit line. But, having been with Citibank for 21 years -- the customer service agent was obviously impressed with my loyalty --, she promised to ask that my case be reviewed favorably.

I was pretty sure she was an Obama supporter, too.

When I got back, I tried again, ready to go get the phone to call and beg, I'd never, ever forget again; I promise. Please, please forgive me, just once more. If I am not innocent, I am not a bad credit risk, either.

"Operation not possible."

Panic again. Why? Had they cut me off? Banished me from on-line payments for my sin? I could barely see the screen in the agony of my self-recrimination. Wait, there were small red words. They read,

Account Alert: This account is closed, because your card was reported lost or stolen. If you have not added the replacement account as of yet, please do so to access your account information.

Okay. Breathe. Click on the link and add the replacement account.

It worked. Breathe. Make your payment, even if it is -- not late?

There, written as plain as day on the confirmation of my payment was the date: March 9, 2009, and looking back again, the date my payment was due: March 16, 2009.

The 12th of the month is the date I have engraved in my memory as the date my payments are most often due.

Their tactics in the present financial climate of crisis, I hate to say, work.
....

Bailed out! It's fun being a billionaire!

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

CNBC Gives Financial Advice

Daily Show Full Episodes
Important Things With Demetri Martin

Political Humor
Joke of the Day

"Well -- uh --, yes, yes, I have to admit, it's fun being a billionaire."
-- Sir Allen Stanford

Hey! I saw this guy on a news program while we were away skiing. They were looking for him to arrest him, and here he is, right on national television, enjoying himself and being a billionaire!

What Battered Newsrooms Can Learn From Stewart's CNBC Takedown

By Will Bunch, The Huffington Post, March 5, 2009

The most talked-about journalism of this week wasn't produced in the New York Times, CNN, Newsweek or NPR. It was Jon Stewart's epic, eight-minute takedown on Wednesday night's Daily Show of CNBC's clueless, in-the-tank reporting of inflatable bubbles and blowhard CEOs as the U.S. and world economies slowly slid into a meltdown. You can quibble about Stewart's motives in undertaking the piece -- after he was spurned for an interview by CNBC's faux populist ranter Rick Santelli -- but you can't argue with the results.

The piece wasn't just the laugh-out-loud funniest thing on TV all week (and this was a week in which NBC rebroadcast the SNL "more cowbell" sketch, so that's saying a lot) but it was exquisitely reported, insightful, and it tapped into America's real anger about the financial crisis in a way that mainstream journalism has found so elusive all these months, in a time when we all need to be tearing down myths. As one commenter on the Romenesko blog noted, "it's simply pathetic that one has to watch a comedy show to see things like this."

But that's not all. The Stewart piece also got the kind of eyeballs that most newsrooms would kill for in this digital age -- planted atop many, many major political, media and business Web sites -- and the kind of water-cooler chatter that journalists would crave in any age. In a time when newspapers are flat-out dying if not dealing with bankruptcy or massive job losses, while other types of news orgs aren't faring much better, the journalistic success of a comedy show rant shouldn't be viewed as a stick in the eye -- but a teachable moment. Why be a curmudgeon about kids today getting all their news from a comedy show, when it's not really that hard to join Stewart in his own idol-smashing game?

Here's how:

1) Great research trumps good access to the powerful: The Stewart piece makes this controversial but critical point in two different ways. For one thing, the story shows how access to the nation's most powerful CEOs -- supposedly the big advantage of a journalistic enterprise like CNBC -- isn't worth a warm bucket of spit when it results in slo-pitch softball questions, for fear of offending the rich and powerful. And so we see Ford's CEO grilled about Kid Rock's performance at the auto show, Ponzi scammer (later revealed) Alan Stanford quizzed on whether it's fun to be a billionaire, and Maria "Money Honey" Bartiromo gushing at how corporate chiefs were still telling her that their companies were doing great, even as the massive iceberg was casting its shadow over the hull of the American economy.

Jon Stewart's act of journalism -- reported, of course, by his ace team of writers -- worked because there were no interviews at all. It all hung instead on meticulous research, dredging up lethal quips of CNBC's stock pumping hosts to hang them with their own undeniable words -- Jim Cramer's "buy buy buy" when the Dow was roughly double what it is today, his touting of Bear Stearns' and Bank of America's doomed stocks. The kind of research that's so hard for most newspapers to do anymore, with downsized staffs and ever-looming deadlines, but which can so often belies the spin from our "accessible" sources.

2) The American public is mad as hell right now, so why isn't the mainstream media? Balanced reporting is important, but a balanced, modulated tone of voice? Not now, not when millions are hurting from lost jobs and under-water mortgages, and many millions more are living in fear of the same fate. People need information but what they so desperately want an outlet that shares their passion -- and, yes, that rage -- and so Jon Stewart gave people what they weren't getting anywhere else.

3) Tear down this wall... of pretending that the media itself isn't a major player in American society, and isn't a factor in most big stories. Sure, there were greedy bankers and their pocketed politicians working in unintended tandem to take the Dow from 14,000 down to 6,600, but these popular TV pundits were there every step of the way, as The Daily Show revealed, and their contribution was consequential. Mainstream media, after all these years, has a hard time understanding that one of the major political forces in this country is mainstream media, something the audience knows all too well.

4) The First Amendment doesn't say anything about not being funny, or not being passionate. I don't know about you, if you actually watched the piece, but I feel like I learned something important -- confirming the cheerleading nature of the nation's most-watched source for business news, even in a moment of oncoming disaster -- but I also busted my gut laughing as I did. And there's nothing wrong with that, informing and entertaining at the same time -- isn't that what newspapers are charging people 75 cents for?.

You know, sometimes people do some crazy stuff when they realize their days are numbered. I don't have the answers to problems facing American journalism -- not my own newsroom, mired in Chapter 11, nor the others that face a possible death sentence. But fighting for life will mean living each day like it was your last, with passion, anger and laughter, the way The Daily Showshined a light on a crevice of the nation's battered economy on Wednesday night.

Oh, and all of us, over here? Those of us not in the United States? We're just great -- those of us whose spouses work for the public health care system, anyway --, so what's Peter Goodman talking about in today's poor, beleaguered New York Times?

A Rising Dollar Lifts the U.S. but Adds to the Crisis Abroad

Oh, right, the panic over the financial crisis that everyone and her brother is talking about. That financial crisis.

As the world is seized with anxiety in the face of a spreading financial crisis, the one place having a considerably easier time attracting money is, perversely enough, the same place that started much of the trouble: the United States.

Try Googling today's world newspapers and let me know what you come up with. They're having a lot of fun.

No, no. Let me guess. That would be much more fun.

....

The crazies at the end of the subway car

And, while we're having fun, Frank Schaeffer -- Open Letter to the Republican Traitors (from a former Republican) -- (click here for my caveat) is not kissing -- "and there's a lot to kiss" -- Rush Limbaugh's -- "Before it's all over, it'll be called the Ted Kennedy memorial health care bill," -- ass:



I'm going out for a run.

Oh, and remind me to tell you about my nightmare this morning.
....