Counting to 10

They're too tall

that's my fault

But it isn't all my doing. I can hardly even talk about it. Not that the pillars being a little too tall is even the issue really. It isn't. It just doesn't help.

No, it's the inability to read or to follow a plan, nay, to even consider using one until it's clear there is no choice. Then, I have to write instructions like you would for your son for how to make spaghetti balls. No, forget that, too complicated. Scrambled eggs. No. Boiled eggs. Not even poached.

Mom, how come they don't have shells on when you pack them for me?

See? It's like that.

It's why you still do their laundry and pick up their dirty clothes from around the hamper, when it's half-empty.

It's why you pick up the damp towel and hang it up before it becomes one with the floor covering and stiff, when there are towel racks in the bathroom right next door.

It's the "Why think when there's someone there to do that for me?".

This is what becomes of the plans, if they aren't left in the car while they start the work. On the ground, through the night, damp from the dew and the sweat of the previous day's work.

Georges appeared at the kitchen window, next to where I was trying to summon the courage to work on the drawings for the structure under the entry court paving and the new kitchen entry; the one they won't be doing because I have seen their carpentry skills, and it's true: my husband and I do have better ones. Instead, I was just feeling tense and defeated.

"Madame Sisyphe, vous pouvez venir deux minutes?" At least he doesn't ask me to come "just for a second". Two minutes is code for "come sit with us while we work and explain everything".

Georges bent back down besides Jose, where they had been trying to figure out how to make the uncut brick form the motifs. I listened.

"Vous êtes surs que vous ne voulez pas que je fasse des dessins avec les cotes exactes? Vous n'aurez à faire comme je vous l'indique." Georges considered my tenth proposition to make drawings of each and every brick and exactly how to cut it and finally accepted.

"Oui, Madame Sisyphe. Ca serait mieux."

From behind me, where I sat at the kitchen table, I heard loud thumps, like the fall of an ax over and over. I tried to imagine what sort of work on the brick would involve an ax and make a dull thud. And then I heard a car start up. I went out to look. A rope wrapped around the tree stump and led out to the truck straining at an odd angle in the narrow street. Jose stood and watched the stump moved toward him, millimeter by millimeter. It wasn't going anywhere. I leaned down with one of their tools and started to scrape away at the remaining dirt. I hit another big, uncut root. Jose saw me and came back over to look. I showed him a root as big around as my arm.

"Il y en a probablement d'autres comme ça. Il ne va pas bouger jusqu'à ce que vous les aurez trouvé et coupé." He nodded and took the ax, attacking the root. Georges came back in and looked. Jose told him in Portuguese that there was another root. Maybe more. Georges removed the rope from the stump, and I headed back inside.

I came back out with my sketches of each brick, measured from a new drawing on the computer, measurements to match the ones Georges gave me, and gave it to Jose. Georges came over to look. And then it came to me: this, too, was pointless. I felt very, very tired.

They looked at it without really understanding what they were seeing. I began to explain, wishing I could go get my hair cut. Anything.

Just.Not.Be.There.

It didn't seem possible. I pointed to the motif, each brick of the same cut numbered alike, and then to the series of numbered diagrams, showing precisely how to cut each one so that it would work. I might as well have done it with the orangutans or the chimpanzees at the zoo. Georges picked up a brick and showed me the wide face.

"Alors, je marque ici et je coupe --"

"Non, Georges," I said, turning the brick in his hand to show him the narrow face. "Ca c'est la face qu'on voit. Il faut marquer là et là et couper." I pointed to where to measure and cut. He still looked doubtful. Jose took the brick and showed me the wide face.

"On marque ici et là --" I shook my head no and turned the brick to the narrow face. This is where you mark and cut it, here and there. They both looked confused. I took the brick, the tape measure and the pen, marked it out and handed it back. Georges cut it, returned and moved it around, looking for it's place. I picked up the drawing, took back the bit of cut brick and oriented it according to the drawing. Then, I set it in its place and took another brick. I did the same. Georges cut it and started to look for where to put it.

I'll spare us all the details. Finally, after a few more, "Ah! Oui! Je comprends, je comprends." Except he didn't. I suggested that they work it out in a frame on the ground and returned to my drawings, and, after a time, the rhythmic thud of the ax started again.

I went back out only to find Jose alone in the courtyard, sitting by the pillar, looking hot and bothered. Georges was down at the café.

"Madame Sisphye," said Jose, sounding the most put out I had ever heard. "Ca ne marche pas." I saw what he had done in the frame on the sidewalk between the pillars.

No, Jose, of course it doesn't work because it is cut wrong. It can't possibly work like that. If you would either just listen or follow the plan, it would work.

Georges returned. He looked hot and bothered, too. I was that close to letting them have it, except what good does that ever do.

"Georges, je vais vérifier quelque chose. Peut-être CAD a foiré sur les dimensions alignées. Si non, ça marche." He listened and nodded to my suggestion.

"Oui, Madame Sisyphe, parce que quand je perds mon temps comme ça, ça me frustre." Subtext: you have asked us to do something complicated, we don't get it and we don't feel like losing any more money because we can't understand.

Yeah, Georges, when we lose our time, it frustrates all of us, I thought; I said, "Laissez-moi aller voir vite."

"Oui, laisse la aller voir," said Jose, showing solidarity with me.

The dimension was perfect. I rotated the thing the 67° so it would be parallel to the worksheet and pulled a linear dimension. Same thing. Their mistake. I returned and began setting up the bricks they had cut. It came very close to working, except the one they had cut wrong, trying (I'm sure) to find a solution, certain I was wrong, when the drawing shows very well that it works.

I took up the measuring tape and began measuring the cut bricks, off by up to 1.5 cm.

"Elles sont parfois un petit peu pas le même mesure."

"Elles sont parfois plus que 1 cm trop court ou trop long."

"Ca fait la différence?"

"Ca fait toute la différence." I had just gotten off the phone, ranting to my husband between patients. He had called me back after I told him in the middle of an appointment that I was about to throw myself from the roof.

"Reste avec eux et marque les coupes toi-même."

"C'est ce que je faisais! J'ai d'autres choses à faire, tu sais, et même si je reste avec eux, ben, ça leur fâche au bout d'un moment, je suis sure. Et moi? Pourquoi je dois le faire quand on paie des professionnels?" Translation of my tantrum: That's what I was doing, staying with them to mark all the pieces and oversee it, but I have other things to do, you know, and even if I stay with them, well, that must irritate them after awhile, I'm sure. And I? Why do I have to do is when we are paying professionals?

I looked at Georges, who was about to start protesting, the same smile on his face that means that I can't get mad because he's smiling. The hell I can't, but I won't. "Georges, je vais les marquer toutes moi-même. Vous n'avez qu'à les couper plus exactement." He started to protest. I headed him off at the starting block, insisting on my own point rather than hear him complain that the work is complicated (read expensive) for them.

"Non, ça va. Je vais les marquer toutes. Comme ça, vous n'aurez pas en vous soucier." What more could he say? I was going to take care of everything. He'd have nothing to worry about, except cutting them with a wee bit more precision.

This brought us to the level of the courtyard. The ax falls. They had been digging up the surface getting ready to prepare for the concrete slab. Jose had looked like he was going to pass out earlier, when I found him leaning on the long ax handle. Feeling sorry for your workers is a very dangerous thing. You either give in to their endless hinting and pay them more, or you do the work for them. So far, we were shooting two for two.

"Combien on doit creuser, Madame Sisyphe?" asked Georges.

"La chappe va faire combien encore?" How thick would the slab be?

"6 cm, avec de la feraille, 6 cm ça va." I usually see 10 cm. Whatever.

"36 cm en dessous du sol fini de la maison." His eyebrows flew up. He'd have to dig. I was learning to interpret quickly.

"Et la pente de la rue?" How much slope would there be from the step down from the street?

"Il faut mésurer."

A little rough calculation involving a stack of bits of brick, a few slender lengths of wood, and other for a spike, a bit of lumber and a level showed that they definitely didn't want two small steps at the addition.

There was also the question of the change in form of the courtyard and how much of it would come under the new contract I'd need for the walk and patios in front of the "petite maison". I knew he'd want to stop the courtyard along the line of the house like it was before the idea for the entry. Now, that many square feet had to be shifted elsewhere and still counted in the old contract and the levels had to be prepared so the later work would coordinate. Georges looked dubious.

"Aie aie! il va falloir qu'on casse ça aussi," said Jose, pointing to the low wall under the hébé. I nodded.

"Je vous l'ai dit avant. Ecoutez, puisqu'on fait l'entrée, il faut changer la forme de la cour et enlever cette plante pour pouvoir passer." Jose nodded his head. He was only trying to understand things from a physical point of view. Georges had his head full of what I might be trying to get away with in terms of cash money. "Il y a une partie de la cour qui se deplace d'ici," I pointed to where the new entry will go, "là-bas." I pointed to where the low wall and the hébé were. "Et puis, il ya une nouvelle partie qui compte dans le contract que vous disiez que vous ne pourrez pas faire avant novembre. Il faut la préparer quand-même, si non, on risque d'avoir des problèmes." The clouds dispersed from Georges's brow. I had made it clear that I understood that some of what lay around where we stood counted as new work that was part of a future contract, not all, but some, and that we had to do a minimum of it now to make sure the future work matched.

We returned to the question of how many steps. My turn to give in again. What did it matter? It was stupid to have only 10 1/2 cm high steps anyway, so what did one or two matter. I sat on my haunches in the chopped up dirt trying to stay out of the sun and considered the question. The argument of the wall against which I was leaning being fragile for that kind of excavation was fairly convincing.

"D'accord. Partez comme pour une marche." I got up and went back inside.

I'd had enough for one day.
....

Finies les vacances

The top of the front,

coming together

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

Les progrès vont ralentir maintenant.
....

The brick pillars reach the top

My mock-up

The top part, the capitol, as it were, isn't cemented yet. We neared the top, and the wish I had to use a detail one often sees in brick pillars in Normandy gnawed at me a little more. I hesitated to ask; they have already been fairly clear that what they are producing for me far exceeds what they thought they were in for, as nice as (they admit) it is. It's just that nice costs time, which equals money. Eroded profits.

It's just that I thought we were on the same page from the beginning. But, that's mostly in the past now.

I asked. Jose looked a little doubtful about what I was proposing. They work more in stone than in brick. I climbed up onto the ingenious system of scaffolding they had concocted out of found materials.

"Madame, attention à vous -- vous allez peut-être tomber -- vous avez besoin d'un escabo?" I hoisted myself up with my arms, pushing off with my feet from the guardrail along the street.

"Non, merci. Ca va très bien." I set to work showing them how to lay the brick, Georges cutting bricks in half and then cutting them down a little more. Jose started in on the second side, gingerly, the bricks in the wrong angle. Just as gingerly, I said "Non, pas comme ça, mais," and I turned the brick to 90°, "comme ça." He nodded and picked up another brick, began to mark it into a wedge shape, like a camembert. I watched. It wasn't going to work, but he wasn't going to understand that until he saw it. This time, Georges had gotten it first.

All the way around, we placed whole bricks at the corners, at 45° to the center axis, and trimmed half-bricks at 90°, two each side. I picked up whole bricks to weigh them down at the center and began placing the next course all the way around.

"Je vois!" said Georges, breaking into a big smile, "Elle sait ce qu'elle fait," She knows what she doing, he told Jose. I had scored some points.

I finished and set down the bricks he was handing me into the last course, set somewhat back inside again. "Je vois. J'ai vu ça avant, près de Vernon." He had seen the detail, too, he realized now that I had it in place. It's really very typical in the region just to the north of us, only some 15 minutes away, where the architecture begins to employ more brick and less stone. It's a detail that speaks of a slightly more important home in a village, which ours, as small as it is, set apart from the others, is. He stepped back and looked up at the column and the house behind it.

"Les motifs sont vraiment bien comme ça maintenant, hein?" I nodded and answered, the dark bands of the fake timber in natural stucco did look even better with the brick pillars in place. They'll look better still once they have been darkened with the pigmented, natural stucco based stain.

"Si je peux vous le demander, vous avez quel age, Madame Sisyphe?" I laughed. You may ask, Georges. I am not particular about that. In fact, I am rather proud to give my age, able as I still am to scramble up onto a scaffolding and lay a few bricks, my lipstick fresh and my new t-shirt dusted with brick dust.

"J'ai 47 ans, 48 dans 2 semaines." Feeling good, too, especially now that I can finally go to the gym again with my toe healed at last from the second melanoma surgery.

The samples for the brick for the entry court, the walk and patio near the petite maison arrives tomorrow or the next day. Moving along, but I can't be absent a day.
....

Why, thank you, Georges!

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

Mais non, je plaisante.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Brick pillars

getting it wrong

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

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

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

I went out.

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

I took a deep breath and said it.

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

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

God help us.

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

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

La rentrée, dwarfism, the pillars, the sob stories

The brick,
Weinerberger's hand-molded "brun marron"

"Tu as vu la brique?" asked Audouin, rushing into the house to ask if I had seen the brick they delivered and sounding quite undone.

"Oui." That stopped him in his tracks.

"Je veux dire de près." Had I seen it up close? "Je ne pense pas que ça va te plaire. C'est tout," and here he made a gesture with his hands to say that it was not right, damaged in some way, and picked up the other hand-molded sample brick we had chosen for the walk, "Ce n'est pas de tout le même que l'échantillon, ou -- oui, mais --"

"Ce n'est pas la même brique que l'échantillon. Ca c'est la brique pour les poteaux, la cheminée et les murs. A monis qu'ils ne soient pas trompés et ce n'est pas la brique que j'ai commandé." The last sentence I spoke to myself and the animals; he was halfway across the terrace, hurrying to get a brick to show me so I could reassure him about this other brick I had ordered, or thought was the brick I had selected for the chimney, the pillars and the walls.

He returned and held it out to me to show me the marks on the two large faces. That didn't, I explained, matter because we were using it the other way around. The color was much better up close than I had thought, deep claret red running through a brick that tended to a brick orange and browns. It would go with the colors of the house. I had chosen this brick for the colors, because it was available in the thin brick for the chimney right away (or so they told me at the warehouse and headquarters; the supplier is telling Georges otherwise), and because of the fabrication technique that molds the brick by hand, making for an authentic old brick feel that's perfect for an authentic old house made by hand.

It was something else that made him head over to talk to me this morning, a piece of the small balcony in his hands.

"3,200 euros c'est trop pour le mur là-bas en brique." Come again? Could I have a preface, the background, a little orientation. I had jumped out of bed and driven across Mantes to pick up the papers we had never gotten from the school, the ones Sam needed filled out to give to his head teacher at 10:30 AM, stopping on the way back to make a photocopy of the bac results that still cause us agony, only to have Sam harangue me that he would be late if I so much as finished signing my name to the last paper.

It was a little overwhelming, walking up to the big doors of the lycée. There were lycéens everywhere, and all the girls were about a head taller than I am. At the department store yesterday, buying some back-to-school clothes for Sam (his jeans are tissue paper-thin and shredded, with the exception of two), I caught a glimpse of myself in a mirror. I avoid these. They are unkind. It was not pretty. I realized that my father's genes were worse still than I thought. The legs I saw belonged to his side of the family. I gasped. Sam looked over from the dress shirts we were considering for Audouin.

"What?"

"My legs. They aren't normal."

"Yes they are."

"No, they are really, really short and stubby. I look like a dwarf."

"No, Mom. They aren't. They are normal for someone your size." Right, like I said. There are subtle cases of dwarfism, and they said I had a little lordosis in grade school. I remember Dr. Wilkinson showing my mother. Something to do with the dimples at the base of my spine and a curve. My arms are also a little short for my trunk. I know this since I trained to teach yoga and the teacher noticed my difficulty with certain positions that required the arms.

"Your arms are a little short for your body length," she had said. "Try doing it this way." That was another bad day.

We passed another mirror in another store, and I made myself look.

"Sam, I look kind of more normal in that mirror."

"Mom, you are normal." I wasn't completely reassured. I feel even more self-conscious now. I would never survive high school here.

"Attends, 3,200 euros de plus à cause de la rajouture de la brique sur l'autre mur qu'on avait prévu en chaux?" He nodded yes. They wanted 3,200 euros more to do the bit of wall alongside the entry court in brick instead of natural stucco. "Ca me parait beaucoup. Le brique n'est pas si cher que ça," I said, Starting to head back inside. Of course, in as much as I don't know the actual price of the brick because I can't get anyone to tell me, it's a little hard to know. I'll have to go to the local Point P and ask the father of the kid from Sam's old soccer team, Alain. He'll tell me. The others don't want me to know so that I can't figure out their pricing. It's a little tough to work that way.

"Oui," added my husband, "mais c'est trop pour ce mur là. Tu penses que c'est vraiment la peine?"

"Non," I didn't think it was really worth it for that bit of wall. Georges had another point of view.

"3,200 euros additionnels pour ce mur là?" I asked Georges. There it was, that Georges grin, like a kid who's just gotten caught doing something stupid. He made a gesture with his hands, as though to say "Wait, wait. No." I was really confused. Did it have to do with not wanting to talk money in front of Jose because he has no idea what they charge compared to what he makes? I let it drop. We finished reviewing the instructions for the brick laying for the pillars; plans are tough for them, it seems. When we had finished, Georges followed me back inside.

"La brique, Madame [Sisyphe, shall we say], pour les murs --"

"Oui, Georges, mon mari préfère qu'on la laisse tomber. C'est trop."

"Mais, ce n'est pas 3,200, mais 2,300. Monsieur Audouin à du se confondre." Maybe he had misunderstood, but if I knew my husband, he wasn't going to be relieved by this bit of news.

"Je comprends, mais je pense qu'il va trouver ça toujours trop cher pour ce bout de mur."

"Mais, je vous assure, ce n'est pas de vol. Vraiment. Il faut faire l'enduit en dessous tout droit, et puis la colle à 36 euros le mètre carré, et le brique, 7 mètres carrés de brique qu'il faudra poser brique par brique." All that to say that the price of an additional 2,300 euros to cover that wall in brick was justified by the labor involved. I nodded. I reassured him that we didn't consider it an overcharge, especially not my husband. It's just that if I want, for example, the new windows up on the west elevation, I am going to have to give in somewhere else.

"La brique, elle est déjà commandée."

"Vous l'avez payé?"

"Non."

"Bon, ça ne devrait pas poser de problème. Ils ne sont pas en train de la fabriquer exprès pour nous," I added. It's not like they were making the brick just for us. It wasn't paid for yet. The order could be canceled.

"Mais, c'est mieux en brique, non?" Yes, it might be better in brick, but that wasn't what was going to make the difference to my husband. We'd do the chimney as anticipated, but I'd settle for the same color natural stucco on the side wall as along the base of the house and the low wall adjacent to the brick pillars. Tant pis.

He started again on the prices.

"Il y a des gars, s'il y a deux sur le chantier, ils facturent 1,000 par gar pour le main d'oeuvre, mais nous, on n'est pas comme ça. Vous savez, il a un portugais, un monsieur dans un Nissan quatre-quatre noir qui déjeune à midi au restaurant," the bar and restaurant just up the street from us, "et il est passé un jour pour voir les travaux. Il dit que lui, pour tout ça, il aurait pris 100,000 euros. 100,000 euros." His eyes shone. They say they don't like to have to talk about this, but. I think they love it. It's a game. I'm getting used to this. It's meant to wear you down. The old story I've suspected and told all along. Sob stories. Write the estimate and the contract low, then wear your client down for more. Adds here and there, saying, "But, we never understood that," and describe something the client could never have intended as what they understood. Better yet, do it as two people, as Georges and Joaquim do.

Every time he starts, I say, "Joaquim knew perfectly well," and I describe in detail what Joaquim and I said and when.

Take the windows as a case in point. This morning, I reminded him that the windows of the house are in oak, and the new windows were also to have been in oak, at the very least in pine, like some of the windows on the second floor, not in some exotic wood.

"Chêne ou pin, pas de problème, comme vous voulez, Madame [Sisyphe]." Très bien. Then make it oak.

Later, when I was back from my race to and from the school and we had finished discussing the 2,300 extra for the brick, he let me know that he was very sorry, but it would be 30% more for oak. I nodded.

"Oui, Georges, mais il fut compris dans le devis et dans le contrat que les fenêtres devaient être remplacées par des nouvelles exactement pareilles. Je les ai vu une par une avec Joaquim. Savez, d'origine, vous avez été sensé de réstaurer des éléments dommagés de chaque fenêtre et les peindre dans le prix. Nous avons vu chaque fenêtre en détail ensemble un jour, avec Eric, et nous avons décidé quelles fenêtres à garder et lesquelles à réparer. Il n'y avait jamais question d'un bois exotique. Il est seulement quand j'ai poncé les fenêtres déjà faites, qui ne devaient pas avoir reçues une sous-couche d'ailleurs, que j'ai vu qu'elles ont été faites en bois exotiques." Silence.

Summary: it was understood in the original estimate and contract that certain windows were to be restored and others replaced as replicas of the originals, which were in oak or in pine. Joaquim and gone over them one by one in minute detail with me. Never was it said anywhere that exotic wood was alright, and it was only when I sanded them, which I shouldn't have had to do because they were never to have received a primer, that I noticed they were not in oak or pine like those of the house. This was greeted by silence. He knows. He knows I know. But, it never ends there. We have to find a way forward where they get a little something more without getting as much as they'd have liked.

The two new ones for the upper story of the west end of the house, two little windows?

"Elles ne seront pas loin de 2,000 euros pour les deux," he said, eyes trying to convey perfect sincerity and sympathy.

"Georges, elles sont plus petite que l'autre là haut, qui n'a pas coûté 1,000."

"Pas loin." Not far from it, he said.

"Georges, j'ai des amis qui ont fait faire toutes leurs fenêtres plus grandes que ça et en chêne pour 1,000 chacune."

"Oui, mais il y a ceux qui sont plus ou moins chers." Yes, he acknowledged, maybe our friends had paid 1,000 for each of their many new windows, exquisitely fabricated in oak, but not everyone charges the same price.

"Surement, mais je sais qu'ils ont payé assez fort pour tout ce qu'ils ont fait. Ils l'ont dit. Ils éstimaient que ça le vallait." Certainly, I agreed. There are those who charge more and less, but our friends didn't low-ball the prices. They said so. "Ce que je veux c'est un devis pour ces deux fenêtres qui ne sont pas dans le contrat avec option en chêne et en pin, ou sapin s'il préfère -- c'est la même chose. Je veux aussi un échantillon de son chêne et de son pin, et je ne voudrais pas trop de noeuds dans le produit final si nous choissisons le pin."

Summary: Here's what I want. I want an estimate for those two small windows with an option for oak and for pine. I also want a sample of his oak and pine, and if we chose the pine, I want a finish product that uses the clearest pine possible, without knots.

We'll see what I get.

"Et ça," he pointed to the detail in the brickwork for the pillars and the wall, looking a little like a cross between hesitant and disbelieving. "C'est beaucoup de travail. Quand je l'ai montré à Joaquim, il a dit que c'est beaucoup de travail, et à Point P, bon, ils disaient qu'ils n'ont jamais vu quelque chose comme ça." I was waiting for that. The detail in the brickwork for the pillars was a lot of work. They'd never seen anything like it at Point P. They told Georges that it's a lot of work.

"Et oui, Georges, regardez autour de vous à ce que devient la France, le Portugal. Partout c'est laid, le bâtiment bon marché. On ne fait que ce qui ne coûte pas cher. Plus personne ne sait travailler." Look around you, Georges, at what you see everywhere in France, and in Portugal. It's ugly. It's cheap construction, and it's ruining the architectural landscape and no one knows how to do good work in which they can take pride anymore.

"Oh! Mais on sait le faire. On sait travailler, c'est juste que nous avons compris que --"

"Oui, je sais, vous l'avez dit la dernière fois mais ce n'est pas de tout ce que j'aurais imaginé, des pilliers faits par section, toute faite. N'importe qui peut aller chez Leroy Merlin est acheter cette merde. Demandez Joaquim. Si nous avons choisi de travailler avec vous c'est parce que Joaquim semblé lui aussi apprécier le bon travail artisanal et savoir le faire." He looked corrected. He was.

If we had hired their company, it was because when Joaquim came here to see the project with Eric more than a year ago he convinced my by his way of looking at things and discussing how to do the work that he valued good work by artisans who know their trade as much as I do. That is why the window from Lapeyre shocked me. That is why the missing details from the balcony shocked me. That is why claiming that it had never been in the contract to do the newer part of the house, only to treat the colors superfically, shocked us. That is why saying that they had never understood that they were to build the pillars brick by brick, but by prefabricated sections, shocked us.

"Georges, pour mieux comprendre, il faudra que vous rencontriez mon beau-père. Savez, on ne balance pas le moindre bout de bois car ça peut toujours servir un jour. Ils ont élevé 8 enfants sur le salaire d'un officier de la marine française. Il n'a jamais eu des vêtements neufs à lui. Il ne claque pas l'argent 'comme ça'," I snapped my fingers. "On a des amis qui dépensent facilement, mais il n'est pas comme ça. Je l'accepte. C'est comme ça. Vous le voyez là-bas, en train de faire son propre balcon pendant ses vacances?" He considered for a moment, and he grew quiet.

Even my own son, on the way home on the highway after an entire afternoon spent in the shopping mall.

"You know, I was sort of imagining coming home with a couple pairs of more classic jeans, a couple of somewhat dressier checked shirts, suede shoes."

"Mom, did you think about what that would have cost while you were imagining? It would be much more expensive." My son, who had just bought his first clothes at the less expensive department store, suggested that we check out the factory outlets over on the other side of Paris in Marne la Vallée for the Diesel jeans, who has learned to shop the second-hand stores, the friperies, of the Marais. No, I guess we don't "claque" money easily, any of us around here.

Meanwhile, Audouin is cutting the wood for the small balcony now with a handsaw (see photo) mounted on his little table in the absence of the ribbon saw he really needs. This is not going to be a perfect finish result.



"Il travail bien pour un médecin," said Georges, full of admiration.

God help us.
....

Fear and apprehension in Moosesucks

Spy photography,
trying not to be seen up on the balcony

The alarm clock went off. I turned it off, and waited for the second alarm 7 minutes later. If I am serious about going back to sleep, I change it to a minute before the time and, well, go back to sleep. Today, there was no chance. I was tense.

Tense and nervous. Can't relax. No psycho killers. Just the day before the return to school (and it isn't even my return to school; that would be much easier to bear) and September 1, the day we could expect the workers back.

Audouin rolled over and moved a few centimeters closer, "Tu boudes encore?"

I thought about it. No, fear and apprehension had moved into the place of a nearly week-long pout. Or, perhaps it was fear and apprehension all along. Add to the return to school and of the workers the fact that I have to go shopping for something to wear to a wedding on September 12, and my cup runneth over.

He lay there awhile longer, perhaps waiting for signs of intent to communicate on my part -- it wasn't intentional; I think I qualified as catatonic -- and then he said, "Je vais me lever."

The rain was falling steadily outside the closed metal shutters. Last evening's wind was not for nothing. It came up while I was applying a third coat of the black vegetable-tar stain to the balcony on a perfectly cloudless early evening, following an exquisite day, and then the neighbor came by, then we decided to have a little appératif, and then he went for his wife and the little ones, whereupon we sat out in the garden and drank too much authentic Porto, direct from his family's vineyards in Portugal, while their somewhere around 5 year-old-son played in the fish basin. It isn't due to Baccarat, our black Labrador retriever, this time that the newest water lily bud will never open.

I drifted back into a sleep troubled by strange dreams of people I hardly knew, but who my husband, who was also there, knew perfectly well. I was especially aggravated when I came into the kitchen -- my grandmother's kitchen, for heaven's sake -- and found the table covered with all kinds of things he had brought home after a dinner. Not food. Plastic tumblers, empty bottles and things he said would be "useful". That's all well and good, I thought, he isn't the one who has to find a place to put them away until I have use for enormous clear plastic tumblers. Not in France.

The church bells chimed the hour. 10 am. I don't stay in bed that late. This was serious.

And then I heard it. Voices. A truck. I jumped out of bed and opened the metal shutters. I saw my husband's head bobbing along just along the edge of the balcony planks as he crossed the terrace, went out the gate and got into the Voyager, parked in from of the telecom building next door. Maybe it's just someone for a repair, I hoped. That's when the truck went past the gate, "ENOV" was all I had time to see painted on the side before it slid past the house. That was enough: BATRENOV.

They were here. Back right on time for work to start again in September as promised. Right along with the rain.

Sam called a moment ago. I was expecting the call. He has to ride his scooter nearly an hour from across our department. He left on a beautiful Sunday afternoon for what turned into a 36-hour gathering of friends before school starts, and he didn't have a thing to protect him from the wet and the rain.

"It figures," his turn to pout, "all it does is rain here, from September until May."

That is just a little pessimistic. There are some sunny days.

I guess I have to get busy and get ready to oversee the work. It really wasn't reassuring the day that Georges looked doubtfully at the brick pillar and wall design, then back up at me and said, with an air of newfound hope, "You'll be here to help us, won't you?"

I see the brick on the truck bed, and it looks browner than I recall from the manufacturer's supply facility. It's true that it's called "brown brown" ("brun marron" translated), but it was based on dark reds, and that's what the catalog says, too.

Inshallah.
....