Saturday, December 27, 2014

What a Month...December, Bah and a Big HUMBUG!

Only good thing that happened, well...there were 2...my daughter Audrey drove up from Phoenix for a weeks stay and I survived a Suicide by Raw Chicken I attempted.  That's it.  2 of the nicest gifts, a smiling, happy and entertaining time with Audrey and a grip on Life again.  Thank you Kaiser Vacaville and all the wonderful nurses, doctors and technicians that practiced their very best on me.  Food poisoning is a bitch!  And cleaning poultry is a wonderful way to nearly kill yourself as I discovered Sunday morning about 2 am.  Woke up throwing up, choking in fact and this repeated itself three times over a period of 4 hours.  Contents?  Oh...a pint or so of bright red blood. Very green was I with nausea.  Off to Kaiser at 9 am.  Tests, tests and more tests, retelling the tale a dozen times, on and on.  Stayed Sunday and Monday afternoon they sprung me loose.  Awful! Awful!

I'm back to work on the bathroom again, more tile installed this morning after Audrey headed south to migrate back to Arid-Zona.  We waved goodbye about 10am and she was off with some Peanut Brittle and a Focaccia I made yesterday.   I made and distributed 4 loaves of bread yesterday to my neighbors to make up for my missed distribution on Saturday and Sunday as is my usual schedule.

Had a great time at our friend Christine's house on Christmas Day, a ball actually!  Great food, lots of laughs and giggles, some wine to wash it all down with.  Fabulous indeed to have such friends!

Happy New Year to all my readers! Peace!

Thursday, November 13, 2014

Hazel

We got up early, before dawn, crickets and cicadas vying for your attention.  "Your going to meet your grandmother today Corporal, she's come all the way from California to see us!" my mother said while I ate my bowl of cereal and munched on a ripe mango.  "Where do we go?" I asked.  "To the airport in Panama City.

Illness at 71, bah humbug!

It's the shits, not actually but figuratively. Being ill when you already pined down by age and a certain decrepitness that creeps in is awful.  My whole last 2 weeks has been one damned awful physical mess after another.  It all started two + weeks ago with my right leg being numb below the knee, then my right foot felt like it was on fire top, bottom and sides.  Then my upper leg muscles developed, over a couple of days, a dark, awful, throbbing pain that only handfuls of Ibuprofen would fight back enough so that I could walk, albeit slowly and with a strong limp.  Then went on for a week without end, morning and night.  So I emailed my Doctor, Dr. Blues at Kaiser, he set up an appointment and I went as instructed.  He and a physical therapist thought that I had a pinched nerve in my Lumbar #5 and prescribed Prednisone.  It took a couple of days for the drug to take effect and I was good to go, happy on the drug too...which is a bonus, I've witnessed others taking this particular drug and they sometimes have a difficult time managing their anger and frustration and just generally are "out of sorts".  I was "IN SORTS" lots of energy, little to no pain from the leg, even at night which had caused me to lose a lot of sleep.  When the prescription ran out I supposed that I was not expected to have the damned leg pains return but by the 3rd day I was in the same damned painful situation that I was in before.  At first I didn't fall back on the Ibuprofen but by day 4 I was back to 12 a day.  I emailed my Dr. again and this time he set me up for an MRI.   So off for an MRI I went, a big nothing as far as agony goes and we all waited for the results.  Within hours I got an email saying I had a  Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm.   Shit, shit, shit.  That got our attention!  Kelly sobbed a bit, I felt far sicker than I was...not good news.  So then an appointment with the vascular surgeon was made and once again I was back in Kiaser.  She was very informative, relaxed and generally made us feel much better about the prognosis.  It was but 3.6cm in diameter and they typically do nothing but watch it periodically until it reaches 4.5 to 5cm...then it's surgery time.  Through all of this however I was really ILL, I had a 101 degree fever, sweats at night and felt like hell during the day...even took naps for chrisakes!  I do NOT take naps!  I did though, I was bushed.  I had this left armpit rash that itched like crazy through it all, and still does.  Today the fever dropped to 98.8...I'm normal at 96.8 so I'm still a bit warmer that I should be.  My BP (blood pressure) during this whole two week period rose significantly from the normally low (for me) of 105/75 to 165/95.  Now it has returned to the lower numbers after my Doc upped my prescription.  So there...I'm alive.

Friday, October 03, 2014

Hospital

In terror, in the hospital.  My stomach hurt terribly, my mother's look of concern.  The stiff military doctor, the mean nurse who took blood from my skinny arm.  The stupid gown they handed to me, my mother helped me undress and put in on.  By now I was crying, bawling, sniffing and choking away tears running down my face.  Terror!  What happened to me?  Why do I hurt. No answers, only questions, where had I been?  What was I doing?  How did it happen?  I knew none of those, only that it hurt and I was here and I felt the risk and fear all at once.  operation?  Did I hear that too?  Why? What's wrong?  I hate this hospital, I hate these doctors and nurses.  My mother tries to comfort me, my father isn't there, he is at work at Ft. Clayton somewhere and I am here.  Tucked into a bed with crisp white sheets, so cool in the Panamanian heat and humidity.  They all leave us, my mother and I, alone in the white room with the white metal bed and the white, crisp sheets covering me.  "Mother, what are they going to do?", she replies "operate".  I scream "Nooooo!" and flail at the bed, the sheets.  Crying, wailing, screaming, the nurses return.  They have tape and gauze by the roll.  One holds down my legs while I punch her in the back and struggle to stop them.  They are rough hands that have done this before, my arms are next taped apart onto the rails of the bed, I am spread-eagled onto the white sheets, in terror, I cannot move out and away.  My mother strokes my head and pets my arm to console me.  The nurses leave once again.  Tears flow, I bawl like a baby but I'm not a baby.  I'm afraid and everything that has happened here has made me more fearful.  I'm in terror.  "Get me out of this!" I say to my mother as she strokes my forehead. "You have to control yourself first," she says in the soft tone she sometimes uses to convince me of something or the other.  "When are they going to operate?" I ask sobbing uneasily.  "In the morning," she replies.  "Let me go!" I scream, "let me go!", I don't want to be operated on!"  She eyes me and says nothing.  I cry on, it seemed like hours and fell asleep.  I awoke and the large clock on the wall said 2 am. "Mother", I said looking around the room. "Mother?"  No one answered, she was gone.  I cried myself to sleep once again held in place by the angry tape to the bed under the crisp white sheet.
 
 

Monday, September 29, 2014

Father

Father

Nelson Lute was a giant to me. 6' of quiet power in the house. I could tell he loved my mom and I as he bounced me on his knee and rewarded my wonder of him with toys he made by hand. He carved animals for me to play with out of the native woods he chopped from the jungle across the street. 


He took me with him to work at the General's kitchen where I peeled potatoes and carrots and chopped vegetables. He laughed with me and at me at times and rarely got angry at me. With my mother he grew to be different. He often carved his animals in the rattan chair in the living room of our casita and my mother, always neat and prim about the housekeeping, feined him to stop which he never did. They argued the argument of the sexes as I learned, two people in a disconnect, going different ways without knowing it. I suffered their fights and angry outbursts. I ran to my friend's casita across the street to escape but could clearly hear anyway. Kindly Ms. Woods would bring me inside and feed me cookies and milk and she wouldn't allow me out until it quieted down. Sometimes Father would rush down the stairs, jump into the jeep and disappear into the night and I would return home to a tearful Mother afraid of what this meant. The next day came quickly enough with Louise making breakfast and visits by the geckos amidst thew squawking of the parrot. Life was seldom boring.

Father knew several men who worked at the Canal locks and took me on a tour with them to see how it was all accomplished. I rode in the little "donkey" shuttle that pulled the boats and ships along the way. He marvelled at everything mechanical and was an excellent mechanic in his own right. He loved making things and using them, screwdrivers, wrenches, a wood lathe and all it's knives and tools which he used to make a set of matching livingroom lamps for my mother. 




The war, of which I knew little, was over. Father came home to stay. This is the father that I would have as my own, undivided by the "damned war" as he called it. He rarely talked of the war, where he went or what he did. My questions, "How many men did you kill?" "Where were you all that time my Mother was alone?", "Did you kill any Japs?" went unanswered. That was his quiet familiar way. 

I sat on Father's knee while he whittled away with a knife he had made, at a small bock of dark wood, "mahogany" or "Palo Rosa", he called it, periodically sharpening the blade so it would work easier.    My mother sat in the easy chair beside us reading a Photography magazine.  The chips piled up on the floor below us.

Friday, September 26, 2014

Mother

My mom was slender-ish, 5 ft. 4" and an adventurer.  After all...she married my dad. A happy sort who loved animals a bit more than she should have as our house was a zoo of sorts most of the time.  Little green lizards (a type of gecko) everywhere (Un-named), a parrot (Spook), a baby crocodile (Crack), two cats (Hymn and Her) and jars of miscellaneous bugs but no cages anywhere.  Her day began with feeding this and that to each with great care and concern as was her way.  She mostly loved the little lizards which crawled in through the open window slats to gaze upon all else from vantage points on the wall.  They changed ID over time, became bigger and smaller ones, never less than five or six.  Green ones, some with red heads and gecko-like with fat toes that left tiny tracks wherever they wandered.

She was a fine cook of anything she wanted to serve.  She loved to cook pasta with red sauce as she called it, and it was delicious.   Louise had taught her about the local vegetables and how to prepare them.  Mom was kind to me always, hugging, kissing me goodbye on school days and taking me around to see the wonders of this particular paradise.  She was a consummate photographer, taking 35mm slides of everything with her Argus C3 camera.  That camera was with her wherever she went so she could record her world.

We often went to Balboa which she particularly liked, a funky sort of backwater town attached to the side of Panama City.  There were shops there, and a sort of open air market where locals would sell whatever they had in the way of fruits and vegetables and household junk.  Mostly she came to bar hop in the late afternoon with me in tow.  She was a drinker, attractive and more gregarious than most.  I was told by her that I was "The Preventer" though I knew not what she meant.  Men, of which there were plenty, found her amusing and, if it weren't for me, too available to ignore.  The port of Balboa was right there, sailors and workers from all over the world, some with wily ways that, it seemed, she found interesting, maybe too interesting I thought.  When my father was gone, we went there often. 



The beach was avoided at all costs as the riptide was dangerous and many drownings of military people had happened there.  No doubt they were drunk.  I wasn't allowed out of my mothers sight while in Balboa.  She would lead me to the bathroom when I had to pee and wait for me at the door.  She drank and talked and I'd get an ice cream bar and pilfer a sip of her Old Fashioned when I could.  I liked the taste.  She would shop for clothes and trinkets and we'd drive home to Ft. Clayton in the jeep, her tipsy and laughing and me anxious to join my compadres in an evening adventure or mud slide.

 

Wednesday, September 24, 2014

Louise

Her dark skin glissened with sweat when she would run after me to come to lunch or dinner.  I ran away from her and looked back and saw her grab her leg below the knee.  I saw her grimace and I ran to her realizing she was hurt.  She said she felt a sting and saw a scorpion fall from her dress to the ground and crawl away.  She sat down and massaged the sting saying how much it hurt.  I looked for the scorpion in the grass below the red cliff of clay but didn't see it.  My clothes were red with mud, my hands were too and she took some clay from my shoe and pressed it against the now swelling wound.  We walked back to the house slowly, she with a limp, me crying for her hurt.  When we reached the bottom of the stairs my mother came down quickly to help and soon she put Louise in the Jeep and off to the hospital we all went. 



My mother was a fast driver in the little jeep and I worried about her when she drove anywhere, but this was different, we were rushing for Louise.  The smell of the emergency room was of pungent alcohol and medicines.  The doctors and nurses were US Army GI's and while it was unusual to have a Panamanian there they quickly went to work on Louises wound.  My mother and I held hands while we waited anxiously in the waiting room.  I felt guilty for having run from Louise when she can after me and I told my mother that I was sorry and felt I had caused the pain to Louise.  I loved Louise as I did my mother as she had been with our family since we had arrived in Panama right after I was born.  She was my caretaker and friend, parent, big sister and all of those things rolled into one.  When she came out of the emergency room her leg was bandaged from the knee to her ankle.  She told us that they had given her treatment and that she was to return in a week.



 We drove her to her home in Panama City and my mother told her she would take her next week.  Over the next few days things were different at home, my father was very busy at his Army work and Louise was not there to watch over me, cook or clean house as was her usual duties.  The next week Louise went with my mother to the hospital, now her leg had ballooned to twice it's normal size and was black and blue and very painful to the touch she said.  We once again waited patiently in the waiting room while she was being seen.  When she reappeared her dressing had been changed and now there was a tube coming out of it as a drain into a little bottle filled with cotton balls.  It had become infected and become gangrenous too and the doctors had told her that they might have to amputate her lower leg. This upset me greatly and I cried once again for feeling I had caused this catastrophe to befall my Louise.  Over the next month she came once a week, then twice and finally she was "home", her leg better but with a huge scar where the drain had been.  I never ran from her again.

Monday, September 22, 2014

I Dream of DDT

Amidst attending school in the Ft. Clayton elementary school where I was a beaming and bright A student and running the streets and local hillocks for adventures came the DDT truck.   It announced death to mosquitoes, biting flies, ticks and every other creeping, crawling insect it contacted including the fireflies of our wondrous delight.  The oil slicks gleamed their multi-colored sheen as they drifted down the hilly streets.

You could hear the low thrum, thrum, thrum of the diesel engine and the mad cheers of the throngs of kids behind it as it made it's way through our paradise.  From blocks away the cheers and yips and yells as kids were drenched in the aerosol spray from it's spray rig boom. 
 

 The kids gleamed too, high from the vapor and equally poisoned by the chemical, their brains dancing in the street amidst the dying bugs as they floated away in the stream, dead, inert, gone.  Oh we were all "forbidden" to chase the evil truck, many swats to our rear ends took the place of the fine run...temporarily at least. 

David and I, helped by Margaret tried to protect the insects we liked, the fireflies and lady bugs and big beetles by capturing them as best we could and putting them in jars until the day after the evil truck passed...then they would be released to go on their way.  Little did we realize they were being released into a dead zone of built up DDT that would kill them, albeit slowly, anyway.  We felt like heroes and rescuers of our little friends as they were released back to their shortened lives.

Saturday, September 20, 2014

Panama

I feel the warm rain as it pours down from the heavens above, as the black clouds build in the afternoon and then spread themselves heavily over the isthmus.  My isthmus.  Days spent in the safe-as-a-convent streets and casetas of Fort Clayton.  Floating paper boats down the rushing gutters to the grates that take it all away.  It rained daily for weeks at a time in the summer and just slacked off a bit the rest of the time.  The water so warm, stained deep red by the clay that was the soil of the jungle in front of our house.  We played in the thick, slimy mud and slid down the many hillside ravines created by our butts.  We picked fruit, mostly ripe mangoes which served us well as lunch.  Lemons and limes for lemonade and limeade were as available as water.  Bougainvillea's and tall magnolia trees bloomed everywhere and the place smelled of lilacs and red earthy mud.  The jungle was just that, a jumble of huge leaves and a multitude of tropical trees and vines that seemed most impenetrable, especially for small kids.  It  was, for us, another world full of unknown dangers and dripping water from the canopy above. It was "off limits" by all measure but was the boundary of our smallish world.

David Woods was my best friend as we grew older and a pretty girl who lived two houses down named Margaret joined in our reveries as well.  I found myself infatuated with her at the ripe old age of six and she was equally fond of me as well. Margaret made a lemonade stand which she set up on the entrance to the housing area and made a decent amount of coin from the comings and goings of the residents.  It was very warm in Panama and her icy lemonade was cold and delicious and, best of all, free to us boys.  David and I were dear buddies, played ball together and whatever adventure and mis-adventure was at hand we both shared in.  My father made toys that we all enjoyed, he even made an 1/8th sized wood jeep that matched the one that sat in our driveway.  It had the guts of a pedal-car and we would take turns chasing iguanas up and down the street in the little jeep.  The iguanas grew to four feet in length and those monsters were very challenging to capture without getting bitten so we mostly chased smaller ones and limited the keeping to one or two around the house.  My mother loved them when they would lounge in the sun on our veranda flicking their tongues to catch the errant flies and bugs that were so common.  There were many, many lizards and birds that frequented the lawns and trees that surrounded the house.  Multi colored parrots called from the jungle and monkeys screamed insults to one another as they ran from tree to tree or past our government homes.  We had all the free pets we ever wanted.



Friday, September 19, 2014

A Story, Not So Short

This is going to be a multiple page remembrance sort of thing.  Not a diary and not, certainly a biography, it being written by myself to you the world wide reading audience and you'll be visited with the usual array of bad language, angst, piss-off ed ness and whatever.  I'm going to try to keep it all facts and dated as well as I can recall but the early parts are going to be an admix of my own feelings and such and what I was told by others.  Broad strokes will be taken along with trivial bullshit that probably means nothing to anyone except myself.  I beg you forbearance if I pain you in anyway or say inappropriate things that create a sense of hurt. 

Life began at Mercy Hospital in New Orleans, Louisiana.  I've been there since and wrote to them upon occasion regarding my birth certificate, needing it for one thing or the other.  They answered with explanations so I suspect that Mercy was indeed the place of my birth on August 17th, 1943, a summer's day.  My mother's name was Anne Lute and her maiden name was Anne Teriaca.  My father was Nelson Lute a Corporal in the US Army at the time and had been in the service some 8 years when I was born.  He was 23 at the time and had been implored the way the military implores you to ship out, family in tow, to Ft. Clayton, Canal Zone, Panama.  I, of course, had no say in this travel whatsoever and as I awakened from my very early childhood I found myself amidst a rainy, humid, tropical place and grew adapted to it over the years. 

                                                         Mercy Hospital, New Orleans
 

We had a maid named Louise, a black creole she was, a native Panamanian and my personal "wet" nurse as well as being our household's keeper and cook.  She slept overnight on the screened veranda overlooking the parade ground.  She woke early, fixed us breakfast and departed to shop for lunch and dinner.  She was warm, kind and spoke with a lilting voice that sounded like music to me.  I loved her.  She didn't live with us but lived a bus ride away in Panama City on the Pacific coast.  She stayed the week and went home to her own family on the weekends.  Sometimes she took me with her.   I would play in the streets of Panama with her children and her neighbor children as carefree as we could be while the war in the Pacific held it's own threats against us all.  My days on Ft. Clayton were spent playing with neighboring GI children while my father had left us for his own very private war against the Japanese in the Pacific.  In later years when asked he would not discuss it, it broke his heart it seemed and he lost a brother fighting in Corregidor in the Philippines. 

Sunday, August 10, 2014

You know, I don't Blog about anything, just our Life but...

It's about the OIL isn't it?  No matter we're fracking everything that's frackable in the US, Canada and anywhere else that can sell the oil/gas shit to us so we can have MORE, MORE, MORE!  War is a GIVEN when you have a foreign policy built on the possession of one commodity that THEY have LOTS of and we don't.  We frack and keep our fingers crossed that they keep pumping and pumping into those tankers and keep delivering to us.  So we kill, main, wound and make ourselves the pariah of the world...and it just fine.  Wow, we are bereft of ideas, bereft of logic and bereft, most of all, of morals.  Shame on us.  No we are back into Iraq/Iran/Syria and every other place we have no business (Oh yes we do!!!!) there, fracking be damned, it's not enough, we want control of the source, the price and the delivery.  Fuck the people, the innocent children the faithful believers of whatever religion they practice, they all die before our NEED.  Awful! Awful! Awful!  No new ideas, no hope for the future, just weaponry and the worship of death by oil.
 

Monday, August 04, 2014

Easy, Delicious, Exceptional

What?  Food, not your boyfriend or girlfriend either.  Something you can make them that will keep them around a bit longer. 

World's simplest pizza substitute.  Pizza is a flat bread, every culture on earth (or most) have a flat bread, a pita, crepe, pancake, tart, tortilla.  Usually plain ol' flour but can be whatever the tradition expects.  In California, Southwest US,  I'd make this with the common Flour Tortilla, you're selection may vary.  It's ok, get a couple, depending on size maybe two per person, maybe not if they are big. 
So here's a sample ingredient list:

4 - 8" Flour Tortillas
1 Tbs Olive Oil
Common Button Mushrooms sliced very thin (1/16th inch thin!) and pretty like a mushroom should look.
1 Medium Lump Buffalo Mozzerella Cheese, Jack Cheese, or any other melting cheese you like.
A pinch of Salt.
Sprinkle of Pepper or Red Pepper Flakes

Lay out the tortilla(s)
Brush one side with Olive Oil.
Lay a careful layer of the mushroom slices leave a bit of room between them.
Slice the cheese into 1/2" lumps and randomly distribute them over the top.
Apply salt and pepper.

Place dressed tortillas on a cookie sheet  4" under broiler or oven top burner.  Turn on highest heat.  Watch carefully...when the cheese begins to melt and bubble you are done, done, done.  Remove, cut with a pizza cutter or a pair of scissors, eat!

Oh my how simple and delicious this is, thanks to Jamie Oliver for the timely hint.  He's a genius!

Obviously the variations are expected.  Substitute eggplant, anchovies, the thinnest of tomato slices and different cheeses, it's good, very good, easy and quick.  Have fun with this one.
 

Saturday, August 02, 2014

TWO dAYS wITHOUT rAIN!



Really!  This has been a very wet, cloudy and cool summer season in France.  Enough rain that I couldn't de-weed the courtyard effectively until now.  Now my excuses are few, except I hate it and still don't want to pay for it to have it done.  So Roundup is now on all the weeds and greens growing where they shouldn't throughout the courtyard.  I put it in 48 hours ago and if it were warmer it would have all wilted by now, instead it looks much as it did, a pisser!  Anyway I hacked at the awful blackberry bushes and wild climbing roses that have inhabited the former courtyard garden circle hoping to at least gain some degree of control before winter and the real deluge begins.  Maybe the winter will be a cold, frigid one that would help keep the growth down too.  We won't know until we come back next year.

I've started filling holes used by the mice, ratons etc. to invade my kitchen...they have been largely removed thanks to the efforts of Cara Cat-Ture and Mucca The Magnificent.  They have done themselves proud.  Dozens made into snacks day after day, week after week.  Now I'm plugging the holes into the little larder and the room itself where pipes exit and have been widened by the mouse highway krew (similar to Cal Trans in California only more efficient!). 

Painting the front door has brought this on...this afternoons weather...Thunderstorms...bah, humbug!

Duck Breast for dinner, Brocolli, Cannoli Beans







 

Sunday, July 27, 2014

They Start With 9...Right?







Well, she's at either 8 or 7 depending on whether it counts as 2 jumps or 1.  We had breakfast, French hen eggs as an omelet w/ squash, red and yellow sweet peppers and young gouda cheese and coffee.  Then off to St. Aout (San Too), Saint August to all you Catholics, to a huge brocante (junk/attic/yard/boot sale).  We parked after scouring the neighborhood area under a large oak tree and wandered through the streets ogling at the offerings, baby clothes galore, rusted tools, misc. wrecked items, old pots and pans, some ancient ceramic pots, electric supplies etc.  What junk.  We did this little activity for about an hour then having gotten quite hot and sweaty veered back towards the car and motored out into the beautiful French countryside for a while or two.   Over hill and dale, past wheat fields now shorn, corn stalks 6 feet high, groups of Charollet cattle for both meat and milk, old fallen down barns and such, beautiful!  Then homeward bound on the Lignieres - La Chatre road.  Parked across the street I ran into the Proxi next door for some potatoes and Kelly went on to Maison Blanche.  Upon returning I heard a crying cat, not inside...outside!  Huh?!  Sure enough as I exited the laundry room door there was Cara Cat-Ture panting like crazy and screaming "Help Meow!" as loud as she could from the TOP OF MY KITCHEN!  How in the hell?!  So back into the house I ran upstairs and opened the window in Kelly's sewing room to let her in...Meow! Me-Owwww!  with this awful desperate whine attached.  "Cara, Cara" I called again and again but she wouldn't climb up the tiles (hot as an oven!).  I then went downstairs and headed to the barn to get the 25 foot chestnut ladder (100lbs at least!) to go to her rescue but was called off by Kelly.  Cara had leaped from the roof the 12 feet to the ground and was now being taken, in arms, into the house.  So I figured it unfolded like this. 
Cara Cat-Ture was in the attic, she climbed or jumped into the open attic window ad her curiosity led her to climb out onto the roof itself.  Soon wither her feet being roasted by the slate tiles and getting increasingly hot she soon leapt to the top of my kitchen roof.  It's the only way there that I can see available to her.  So...8 or 7 left?

Saturday, July 26, 2014

Warm Day, Good Day To Kill Plants

That you wanted to thrive.  Hot sun on tender basil leaves, fried basil.  Replant new basil.  Rosemary can take it though, as can the beautiful sage and the oregano is up for it too.  I've grown basil here...well, at the old house on the other side of town that was 4 feet tall!  Here...I kill it.  I plant celery stalks though and they make it along alright delivering me stalks plus beautiful, flavorful leaves whenever I want them.  But no basil, that dud.   The damned bay tree has grown to be an outsized monolith of a tree.  It needs a serious pruning, like 1/2 gone this year and another 1/2 next to get it away from the barn roof and environs.  I've misplaced my pruning shears too so that makes that particular task neigh impossible as the branches are as thick as my wrist currently and not getting any smaller.  Shit, shit, shit! 

Then there's the saga of my old friend Ford The Truck.  He was parked in the street he was...now he's being stored after being found without a proper current registration tag and being left on the street without being moved for three whole days, imagine that?!  Grrrrrrr.  The police supposedly KNOW every car and the house it belongs too, at least in Olde Town that was the myth going around not too long ago.  They know, or should that most homes there do not have a garage and there is no off-street parking anywhere in blocks!  Ah, no avail, we just ticket them, then we'll tow them (which they did.  Afterwards my old and dear friend Wayne Day towed it himself to his business address and stored it there for me.) and charge them 285 USD to retrieve the truck and 185 dollars for a release form from the idiot police.  Highway fucking robbery!  So damned stupid I can't believe it.  We've lived there for years and never had a single incident and now this.  Police getting dumber and dumber!  Meantime we're out hundreds of dollars for nothing.  Bastards all!  Grrrrrrr.  They've lost a friend in me, that's for sure!

Wednesday, July 16, 2014

We're Street Legal At Last!

The trusty ol' Toyota Avensis is now worthy of the fine French highway system according to the guys at St. Amand's Controle Technique inspection station.  Wen we took her into them on May 22nd she was in bad shape, no spare tire and the entire set of lights on the driver's side had been destroyed by a mere Bambi on the road between Lignieres and St. Amand Montrond.  Pain in the arse we had to get started with making her legit again...thus we got her inspected knowing full well she would fail.  That though was key to getting her fixed properly and thoroughly as the repair shop (Mr. Gue's Garage in town) now had an official piece of paper that outlined her several problems in detail.  We even found a new lamp that suddenly appeared on the dash that lights when the lights are ON to signal the driver that all the lamps are functional!  We've never seen that light before in all her years with us.  So we entered the office and I placed the old documentation from the last visit on the counter.  What ensued was pure confusion and dread as the shop owner tried to convey to moi what was to occur, this of course in pure, unadulterated by French words I might recognize.  I understood little, if any, of his Berrichon dialect...quite common here in the Berry (ahem...a wiki: "

Berrichon is a French dialect spoken in the French province of Berry. The word is also used as a demonym and as an adjective meaning "pertaining to Berry".
The dialect evolved out of the langues d'oïl which evolved during the Middle Ages out of the Vulgar Latin spoken in northern Gaul. Its general use in the Berry region began to decline in the sixteenth century as the local aristocracy and bourgeoisie began to adopt standard French, leaving Berrichon as a "patois" used by the peasantry in the countryside. Subsequent developments, such as the French Revolution, which created a sense of nationalism, and the establishment of free, mandatory, primary education under the Minister of Public Instruction, Jules Ferry, which greatly expanded the teaching of French, further undermined the position of Berrichon.
It is, therefore, no longer possible to say that a Berrichon "patois" exists, but rather that a regional version of French does. Traces of Berrichon and its regional varieties remain today. Most Berrichons still remain very fond of regional words and expressions and use them often. For example, instead of the word pie (magpie), one often hears edjasse in the north and ajasse in the south of region.",

so at an impasse and having tried several lines of enquiry I gave up and called our friend Liz for translation services.  She was going to drop what she was doing and race to St. Amand to help us too but I stopped her and told her, "no, he's right here" as I handed the phone to him as quickly as possible.  This was a fortuitous event as he dropped everything else he was going to do and took the car into the garage to complete the inspection immediately as he got off the phone with Liz!  Yes, I apologized profusely for my lack of French, for my breathing, for my inelegant stupidity.  Soon we had the precious sticker for the windshield and all the proper paperwork in order.  We left feeling proud of our accomplishments for the day.

I've taken slightly but significantly ill through last night's mostly sleepless and bothered-by-the-kats night's rest.  Not a "stomach flu", probably some cross-kat/mouse-namination that yielded explosive diarrhea and a certain shade of green at 12:30am, 1:15am, 2:30am, 4am, 6am and 7am and throughout the rest of today's morning and early afternoon.  I was frog green most of that time and could not lose sight of the toilet rooms for any reason...I'm a slow runner these days. Burp!  You know what I mean. 



 

Tuesday, July 15, 2014

Progress Is Our Most Important Product

That was the advertising slogan of General Electric in the 50's and 60's in the USA...well I've renewed it right here in the Maison Blanche in Lignieres.  Lights, we have lights in the Dining Room, my Ancient Kitchen and, as I write, our incredibly able electrician is installing wall sockets for my counter in the Ancient Kitchen and also plugs for the dining room.  That's the order of the day, tomorrow he'll attack the Grenier (attic).  We are ecstatic to say the least!


It's been wet and cool for the last few days, rain every night at least and a bright and sparkly thunderstorm or two has visited us.  It's been so wet that I can't continue the courtyard clean-up, too much mud!  Tomorrow maybe.

I spent a good portion of yesterday dismantling the snake's den of power extension cords that had kept us (mostly) in electricity these last 3 years (20 months of which we weren't within 6000 miles!).  It all worked and the house (and us!) are still here, no smoke, no fires.  What an improvement to have s fully electric house once again!

Our friends Dave and Sue have returned from their visit to England, they brought us Cheddar and a mystery cheese all of which is quite appreciated!  Their Cheddars and Stiltons are wonderfully strong and flavorful!  The BEST!  We'll make up a cheese plate for our 5pm "sit" we do every day when we remember to.

Time and Rain Continue

Well after our guest left for parts south I began the Herculean task of weeding the courtyard.  At first I had thought I'd hire a person but our kindly, talented and beautiful (as well as hard working) guest had done such a wonderful job that I began to think that I could do myself...given enough time and energy.  So after we cleaned up the largess of the house following the Great Electrical Repair of 2014 I strode to the barn, gathered a pair of gloves, a rake and a pair of clippers and started in.  The main heap of weeds became taller with the addition of 5 small trees, miles of bramble,  blackberry bushes and similar areas of overgrown climbing roses.  Awful sticky stuff that tore at ones arms and clothing and yielded uneasily from the mass.  The weather was cool between rains and I accomplished quite a lot on the first round of this long fight.  A bit of heat came the next day and my energy sapped and though I was able to find the missing walkway it still lay there covered with a thousand or so clippings I had made.  I've skipped a few days since but progress is happening and last night at our 5pm "tea" Kelly and I clipped loose brambles, roses and tree limbs.  We delicately placed the stuff  into two new reinforced garden sacks (designed for the purpose) that we bought yesterday morning at the moveable hardware store in the Champ Du Foire.  Oh and here is an explanation of Half-Timber framing:  Timber_framing








On Sunday we ventured north of Bourges to a Scottish/French Festival in the town of Aubigny sur Nere with Liz.  It was a cool, dark and drizzly day as we drove, windshield wipers running, through the fields and forests between here and there, very ethereal it was.  Liz had a map and I had turned on the TomTom earlier and though they disagreed often, between Liz and IT we found the place in about 1.5 hours.  We joined the festival in due time with a parade of kilts and bagpipes and a good sized well wetted throng.  We wandered the ancient streets marveling at the half-timbered houses and ogling at the goods offered by vendors from all over France set up under tents along the streets.  We ate baguette sandwiches at a nearby café and had Grande glasses of Stella Artois beer to wash it down with.  A great, friendly, noisy crowd highlighted by passing bagpipe bands made for great people watching.

Friday, July 04, 2014

Juice! And It's NOT Orange!

Yes, yes, yes!  Hurray!  The 2nd floor electricity is RESTORED to it's former glory!  Only now it is SAFER and Moderne in the French way!  New switches (interupeurs) and sockets (prises) and runs of over the stone German wiring tracks (plafonds?), so clean and well thought out.  We are so very impressed with him and the quality of his work!  Fabulous, just FABULOUS!  Now he'll move on to the Attic (grenier) and the Dining Room, Larder and My Ancient Kitchen.  His back is killing him though, he huffs and puffs through the pain.  He showed me the scar from the operation that fused 4 vertebrae.  He gets exhausted fighting the pain yet he keeps going like the Energizer Bunny does.  Amazing as he is skilled.

Our Guest "K" left yesterday via train from Chateauroux to Toulouse.  She is working her room and board off on farms and other sites (the next one is a Yoga retreat) this summer and likely into the fall.  She wants to wind up in Split, Croatia eventually.  She was a real treat of a guest, demanding little and giving much.  She cleaned up the amazingly overgrown courtyard with the resultant pile of debris taller than she is!  One very hard worker with a wonderful sense of self and place, smart and beautiful she is.  She made me proud to be an American just before the 4th of July.

The Kats have slowed their moussing as the mouse supply is dwindling with every catch.  Cara Cat-Ture caught a nice one yesterday but didn't share her reward with Mucca.  Fly-ing though has bumped up as horses are being relocated for the upcoming horse racing season into paddocks about our little village bringing with them the delicious vermin.

 

Friday, June 27, 2014

Arc! Spark! Work Continues...

Progress is...happening.  The Electrician is hard at it!  He works at a steady and quick pace with no signs of letting up.  He asks me questions and most of the time I get about 50% of the words, sometimes more and most times less.  It's ok, I know enough pidgin and sign language relevant to the task that his questions and replies are understood mostly and work continues.  His breathing is labored like a person with chronic bronchitis or a very bad cold or...COPD!!!  Hoping not the later and only that it's a result of heavy exertion and lifting and struggling with difficult to reach places with large drills.  The results are looking quite together and well thought out though and of that I'm very pleased indeed!   The circuit breaker box is up on the upstairs landing and all the channels down the hall are in and some wiring has been completed too.  We're excited at the prospect of having our electrical restored CORRECTLY by someone so skilled and capable.

Our GUEST will arrive at Maison Blanche next week...July 1st.  We are going to pick her up in St. Sever southeast of La Chatre where she has been working on a local farm as part of a program that sponsors such activities.  Pay is nonexistent or very low with room and board being most of it.  Seems a healthy thing to do for a young adult wanting to explore the world a bit.   She'll have many stories we think and it should be very interesting to have her here with us for a short while.  She then wanders off to the next workplace, wherever that may be.  We may even take her if it isn't too distant as the work here will still be going on full blast we think.

Our long-in-history Best Friend Ted wound up in the hospital last week with a Necrotic Gall Bladder! Gasp!  I looked it up, it's not a good thing to have alright...basically a stuck gallstone that caused a gangrenous condition in the tissue of the gall bladder itself and there he went to have it checked and excised.  Communication went blank as he had no email and ours wasn't getting to TJ who was on top of the situation.    Today we finally heard from her, then him...he's back home recovering from the surgery and the PNEUMONIA that struck him at/near the same time!  Too close!  We can't do much from here except call and chat and keep our fingers crossed for rapid and complete healing.  He's a tough ol' bird but this was quite a hit on him.

Thursday, June 26, 2014

Big Electrical Day!

8:30 am, 0830 French time.  The electrician called.  A trip to Brico Depot in Bourges is in order in 10 minutes.  Much rushing around, getting dressed, finding wallet, money, checkbook incase some damned plastic credit card doesn't scan or they don't have the friggin' scanners anymore (has happened!).  Then we follow our intrepid guy through the forests and wheat and colza fields for the next 40 minutes or so.  Then into the maze that makes up La Charite with all the big boxes, medium boxes and small boxes you can imagine...the architecture of supply and demand.  What a visual mess!  It's there somewhere, whatever it is and you can almost always buy it.  Stores open about 9am but 10am ce normale' too.  Close at 12 or 12:30pm and reopen at 2:30 or 3 or, in some cases 3:30.  This all depends on Holidays, special days set aside by the local cities and the mindset of a zillion different organizations and corporate bean-tank members.  We fly into the Brico Marche with E taking up a parking place near the rack of rolling carts and I take an adjacent one.  He gets a cart and away into the giant store of hardware bits and pieces we go!  Oh what an adventure awaits.  Down the electrical apparatus aisle, he picks out wire bundles of some familiar colors and others odd to my US standards, but hey! he KNOWS what he is doing and I am but a novice.  Switches, circuit breakers, circuit breaker panels, connectors, fasteners, long fixtures for placing wire on walls and overhead, 25 of those and that's just 1/2.  Each is 3 meters long...10 feet more or less.  500+ feet of all the wires, some "romex" type stuff too with multiple conductors.  Piled on the cart in about 1/2 an hour we go to the cashier with it and after all is said and done it's about 600 Euros, about $840 USD.  That's under what I thought it's be but this is ONLY the 2 upper floors one (the grenier...attic) which gets only 4 outlets and a switch.  Out the door in under an hour and back on the road to Lignieres...there's much work to be done and some of it is/will be done today! 
 

Friday, June 20, 2014

The Day Of Electricity!

"Our House is a very, very fine house, with two cats in the yard, Life used to be so hard..."  Nice lyrics by CSNY.  Good album too.  About 1/3rd of our fine French maison is electrified, the other 2/3rds is not.  Oh yes, of course there is electricity after all as I've strung out an array of extension cords from the one upstairs working socket and another string downstairs from the laundry room that electric stuff here and there.  Overhead lighting though is unaffected by my clever applications of wire snakes.  This has been the case for a long time with one circuit dead as a doornail.  This all occurred because of a lapse of judgment on my part when I spied (and did nothing about) a small sparking connection in the larder about 3 years ago.  I saw it...and blew it off as a fluke and a short time later the circuit died...somewhere, but where?  I've spent hours and hours, ne...days looking, testing, poking and prodding and double checking to no avail.  Liz darling suggested Maurice the Handyman, who lives nearby and has fixes many of her home-related issues, as, perhaps a source of a possible fix.  For me it meant another brain to re-examine all I've already looked at and maybe, just maybe find out where the problem is and repair it.  In about 1.5 hours he said he'd be here, 10am our time.  Then becomes the difficult task of explaining this whole deal in pidgin French.

Music tonight too. At Le Hall. Free...we like that.  3 groups, an Algerian Rapper and two others.  It should be fun.

France beat the pants off of Switzerland last night!  5 - 2.  GO FRANCE! 

Monday, June 16, 2014

We have a CAR!

Yes, Garage Gau called and it was ready.  I walked swiftly as I can to the garage and there she was, as pretty as ever our 2002 Toyota Avensis former Ambulance/Taxi.  What work! She looks as good as new!  Everything works!  Even the light up/down function is alive and well!  Wow!  I'm ever so impressed, can you tell?!  The paint matches exactly!  No ripples, no orange peel, heavens, what work!  Beautiful!   We have our car back!

We had Duck a la Orange to celebrate, so very good. I used a Bay Wolf recipe, I've become quite familiar with the exercise, sauté, let what was left behind to the next step, build upon flavor..the result is magnificent indeed!  Rare Duck, Parsnips and a green salad.  Oh so good.  Thank you!

Thursday, June 12, 2014

World Cup Day!!!

Yes the opening ceremony and the first game happen this evening.  TF1 will have the opening at 2015hrs with the game following the spectacular!  Croatia vs Brazil...it MIGHT be closer than you think with all the chaos of the setting affecting the players.  The country is MAD over the sport and the stadum holds OVER 200,000 souls! 

Fifa article says:

"We have been working hard, I don't think our team has slept a lot over the last days or weeks," he told media at the FIFA congress in Sao Paulo.
"It's true that Itaquerao stadium (Corinthians Arena) we are still working on. But now you know we just need to put some flowers and nice trees around and it will look beautiful.
"So it's a question of details and I can tell you that the FIFA team and the local organising committee team are ready to make sure that nothing will happen.
"It's not time any more to say what's this and what's that. We are now in the delivery, 24 hours before the opening game, so we just have to make it. And we will make it."
The 12 World Cup stadiums were due to be ready by the end of December but six missed the initial deadline and eight workers died in the construction, including three in Sao Paulo.
Workers could still be seen wiping seats, checking beams and installing wiring in the Corinthians Arena days before the opening match, which will be attended by a dozen world leaders including UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon. (All the latest FIFA World Cup photos)
At the 46,000-capacity Amazonia Arena in Manaus, there were worries about the pitch, which appeared dry in several areas, while power cables dangled in the changing rooms.
Valcke said the media facilities and arrangements for spectators, including food and beverage outlets, would be ready at all 12 stadiums.
He added that any incomplete infrastructure projects were mainly intended for public use after the tournament, rather than being directly related to the World Cup.
FIFA president Sepp Blatter said while he hadn't made many visits to the host country, he had "followed all that was done, and not done, in Brazil.
"Now we're at the eve of the opening and I'm happy that tomorrow we'll have the kick-off and everybody will be in the game, and I'm sure the population of Brazil also will have the time to enjoy it," he said.

Corinthians Arena

Fingers crossed it will go on as planned with nothing worse than burned seats and a few black eyes.

Sunday, June 08, 2014

The Sunday Before "Donkey Day"

The "Brrrraaaaaaaaaaaaaayyyy!!!!" at 6 am awoke me for a sound sleep dreaming of pies...apple-type pies, trying to perfect one, busy, busy dream.  Nor sex, not, violence...just pie making silliness.  Getting the apples, deciding which one to use, cutting them up with the funny apple peeler-corer that we have, then arranging all the sticky slices this way and that, counter clockwise then clockwise, sticky hands, baking the shells, burning one, replacing it. Rush, rush...omg...a DONKEY!!!!  Looking outside I saw one on the Champ du Foire a block away.   It begins.

The "It" is the annual Donkey Faire in Lignieres, falls 51 days after Easter and is the birthday of the Donkey that Joseph and Mary had raised to carry her to Bethlehem or wherever they were intent on going before The BIG EVENT happened.  Oh brother...here's the REAL story (!!!!...MYTH) of Pentacost, pay attention. Sit up straight!

"
Pentecost (Ancient Greek: Πεντηκοστή [ἡμέρα], Pentēkostē [hēmera], "the fiftieth [day]") is the Greek name for the Feast of Weeks, a prominent feast in the calendar of ancient Israel celebrating the giving of the Law on Sinai. This feast is still celebrated in Judaism as Shavuot. Later, in the Christian liturgical year, it became a feast commemorating the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the Apostles and other followers of Jesus Christ (120 in all), as described in the Acts of the Apostles 2:1–31.[1] For this reason, Pentecost is sometimes described by some Christians today as the "Birthday of the Church".
In the Eastern church, Pentecost can also refer to the whole fifty days between Easter and Pentecost, hence the book containing the liturgical texts for Paschaltide is called the Pentecostarion. The feast is also called White Sunday, or Whitsunday, especially in England, where the following Monday was traditionally a public holiday. Pentecost is celebrated seven weeks (50 days) after Easter Sunday, hence its name.[2] Pentecost falls on the tenth day after Ascension Thursday.
The Pentecostal movement of Christianity derives its name from the New Testament event."

It's hot, not screaming hot like it can be but hot enough to turn the fan on or sleep on top of the covers at night for a while.  We lowered the blinds in the south facing rooms, the Sale du Bain, the Sewing Room and the upstairs hallway to keep the sun out. 

Tonight is the Jamaica vs France Preliminary match (soccer you sillies!) at 8:45 live on FR1. Go FRANCE!!!!

______________________________________________________________________________




 

Thursday, June 05, 2014

Mouse Apocolypse

Yes the total kills are up, up, up!  Thanks to my own contribution of a LIVE trap that killed one burglar mouse as he exited stage left.  The BUTTER bait worked it's buttery charm and Mr. (or Ms.) mouse fell for it...and the trap's door crushed him/her.  One less.  My small larder in the Kitchen of Doom and Diarrhea has had a small invasion of it's own going but I've put down a trail of HOT, HOT, HOT powdered red pepper to discourage them.  I reset the Live trap too with more butter, we'll see. 


I've been so infuriated about the dropped wireless connection problem I've sought internet advice, seems logical but so much of that is soooo general and these machines are NOT all the same!  Hardware, software all affects it's LOOK to various activities that they are like people, all different in some way.  I did though break a rule I've long set for myself in all matters technical or mechanical...if it isn't broken...don't fix it!  Change for change sake is not the way to go around these damned machines.   Look up what the changes are FIRST and if they don't do something to actually FIX something then don't install them!  Yes...that means ME!  Today, however I took these dropping connections issue(s?) as a "broken machine" message and went on line in search of a newer driver for the RTL8191SU USB Wireless Dongle.  I finally located the file, downloaded it and boy...it's a faster connection and more stable (so far)!  Hooray for RealTek!  Hooray for ME!  So far...

Off to Bourges this afternoon, Kelly wants to go to a certain store downtown and I want to find tile for the counter in my Kitchen of D & D. 
 

Tuesday, June 03, 2014

Further on...June 1st

Not any warmer though it IS June.  We freeze at night and the damned Kats are up at all hours doing whatever Kats do.  It's noisy, I can tell you that.  They have been "mopusing" and "ratting" for the last week or so and have significantly reduced the population of those dreadful mammals.  Mucca prefers the tail region while Cara seems to devour the whole thing within a few minutes.  They are both efficient at this activity.  I'm glad they are here, not only for the personal support they provide but for this hunting one as well. 

This last weekend was the Fete de Music hereabouts, we saw three acts, Baptiste, Les Hay Babies and La Belle Bleue.  Each were wonderful, musical and technically excellent!  Also entertaining as they could be!  I just wanted each show to go on and on.  They were cheap too...thanks to the People of France and the national support for the arts that makes this all possible.  Bravo!  Bravo Lignieres too.
The 14th Century Hall  (old market place)  was, as always packed and with an enthusiastic audience.  Just wonderful! Then  Mr. Baptiste was in La Ban-Douche theater.  Annie Forent gave us the "cooks tour" of the whole facility...impressive and beautifully done!  RED CHAIRS for the audience!  So cool!

 

Rain today? Why not?!

Well last night was a breakthrough in the Ancient Kitchen of Maison Blanche.  A fully cooked Pasta Bolognaise Bucatini with  Melanzana(Eggplant) for the first time the kitchen was used this trip.  The mouse, rat and Gerbil population has been depleted by the efforts of Cara (mostly) and Mucca.  It was an unholy MESS in there.  Much ruination and damage from the 2 year invasion.  It is now clean and functional.  I'll start making bread this week and take a rustic loaf next door to the Proxie-man in trade for some local goat cheese...the best in the world! 

Our current wine habit is a Columbard from South Africa, delicious, delicious!  The house red remains a Cote Du Rhone.  Wines are so good and so very abundant here that it seems a shame to have to buy a South African white when there are Reuillys,  Quinceys, Sancerre and others so very available for so little money...it's partly political,  we like South Africa a LOT and want to support it's wine industry.  This dates from our QE2 adventure from Southampton to South Africa in 1999.  A wine producer from the Cape area was onboard with some of his wines and held an abundant and FREE  tasting, we fell in love with his offerings.  The whites stood out as very fine, and it stuck.

Gotta go down to Mr. Gue's garage and ask him to repair the Toyota's Alternatuer (French spelling noted) when he repairs the drivers side front end next week.  I wrote it down in English and had Google Translate offer up a French-more-or-less version.  Smart?  I dunno...


 

Monday, May 26, 2014

Grey Moonday

First awake thru Cara's whiskery face, purrrrrr,purrrrr.  Now awake, gotta pee.  Then Cara to hurr sink "lake" to have hurr face wash and drink for the morning.  Then back to project of late last night, figure out what new Trojan, virus or asshole's program has become so very nasty on INEZ011, the Room Of Pain and Desperation's 6 core 12GB, Crossfired computer.  Just inane popups randomly occurring and occasionally coming with locked up machine too, a bitch!  All my protections, so-called, have failed to isolate this demon. 

Monday Cleaning

That's what we do...clean.  It goes on and on. between the dust, cob webs, mouse and rat droppings it's ALL you really CAN do!  The winter of Deep Freeze last year (2012) must have killed off a major portion of the feral kat korps hereabouts because though we have put food out for them...alas it is still there days later.  Good for the birds and mice and rats...not so good for Maison Blanche.  My kitchen was a complete disaster!  They (the rodent horde) took up residence in my little larder...eating what they could easily open (most dried pasta, rice, flour, oats) and when that ran out they took to consuming labels off of cans and bottles they couldn't easily open.  Besides that they used the cupboard (larder) for pissing and pooping to a depth of about 3/4 of an inch (25mm) or so everywhere they could. YUK! YUK! YUK! Awful smell like a bad barn or a bats cave.  That's what I've been doing, cleaning that mess and making it useful again.

The car saga goes on as well.  As you know we hit a damned deer two years ago and we then promptly left for home.  The local garage was summoned to do the work, he furnished an estimate of about 1900 bucks which is just about what I though it'd be.  It all starts on the 10th of June.  In the meantime the damned thing has developed a charging problem that has been remotely diagnosed by my ex-student Daniel "Gadget" Bordeau as a bad alternator.  So this week sometime when I feel like going through the pantomime that is naming things I do not know the French word for (my lovely French speaking daughter Audrey said it was "Un alternateur")  and affixing that reference to another object (Voiture...CAR).  It will be fun. 

Let's see...some pics now for the viewing audience.






 

Tuesday, May 20, 2014

Off To The French MOT

Yes, a ride to St. Amand Montrond to visit the Automobile Inspection station and fail.  Fail?!  Ma Dieu! Not that?!  Yes, we've been gone 21 months from "The Accident" in which a wayward, out-of-control deer collided with us head-on and just destroyed the front driver's side of the trusty Toyota Avensis.  Not good this.  So it has sat unrepaired for the last 20 months in our barn awaiting repair. Of course there are other issues associated with this, it's never easy is it?  During the time we are away our two year permit to operate the car on the fine roads of France has expired.  That too must be "fixed".  That process begins with the inspection.  Of course the damage to the headlight assembly and related sheet metal will "show up" on the report and something MUST be done before it will be granted "good-to-go" status.  But...it will be given appropriate paperwork that will allow us to operate the car LEGALLY for perhaps 30 days in order to facilitate such repairs.  tHEN WE WILL RETURN TO THE FINE INSPECTOR AND HE WILL REDO THE INSPECTION AND THE FURTHER PAPERWORK WILL BE ALL FILLED OUT AND WE ARE GOOD FOR ANOTHER 2 YEARS AFTER PAYING A FINE ETC. Oops, caps lock again. So fun! Come twice!

Cara caught a MOUSE! Tiny, young but still HER 1st actual live kill of a MAMMAL!  Yes, yes, previously she has successfully stalked and killed flies (like a savory M&M), mosquitos (flying shrimp) and various spiders (oh so spicy!) but never a mammalian creature.  So this is the day.  We left her alone with her capture under the dining table (appropriate locale) to do her "breakfast".  More (many!) to come I suspect.  Where was Mucca during the hunt?  Asleep on my bed as always.  We were at some time in the last 20 months inundated with mice, rats or gerbils (Big poops ???), top to bottom, floor by floor, in and outside of everyplace!  Grrrrrrr  Droppings everywhere and some damage to carpets too (Grrrrrr), even the canned goods left in the larder had their paper labels eaten off completely!  Surprise ingredients thanks to The Horde.  We clean, sleep, eat (ONLY FROM KELLY'S NOW CLEAN KITCHEN!) and repeat.  My kitchen is a total disaster with some local above floor flooding thanks to the leaky roof.  Where I do not know but the water did a magnificent job of ruining any unprotected (in glass) kitchen items, much rust and ruin to knives for instance.  Oh well, cleaning continues hour by hour.

 

Sunday, May 18, 2014

En Lignieres Mem!

OK, SO WE ARE here, NOT there ANYMORE, oops the blessed shift key again! We made it to Lignieres with our Kats in tow. The flight on United UA900 was uneventful, which is very, very good. Went up, up, up north in Canada, across Baffin Bay, over southern Greenland all blue and a rising sun’s red/orange glare, across the Atlantic above thick stratus clouds thousands of feet below. Ireland was invisible, as was England, France had puffy cumulous clouds and a very smooth landing. TSA check in SFO was quick and efficient even with the Kats, no surprises.


In France we had our bags about as quickly as humanly possible, what with the long walk through the tunnel from the satellite Terminal 1 to the Real Terminal 1 Roundhouse, up the ramp to pick up the baggage. I had both bags in my hands within a couple of minutes, amazing! Then to the TAXI stand down, around and out, picked it up in about 2 minutes flat and now had about 45 minutes to make the drive to Gare Austerlitz to catch our train south to St. Amand. The TRAFFIC on the ring road was haltingly crowded, slow and frustrating as we watched our minutes grind away.


Alas, We missed our train by 2 minutes! Damnit! So...find a seat and sort out what we do next. Another train, another journey. So Kelly sat at the café, had a sparking Pelegrino water while I went around the corner to find the ticket agents...which, of course, were MOSTLY at lunch. I was in back of a line (rehearsing my French Train Talk “je vous dre au tran a St. Amand...”) of 49 souls shifting their weight from left to right...I was number 50. Half an hour and 4 train departures later they well fed and now happily at work mavens of the trains returned from Lunch. 40, 39, 38...10, 9, 8...3,2,1 and I was off to get a ticket to somewhere. Asking for a train to St. Amand Montrond brought back “that has 2 train changes...do you want THAT?” in perfect English, “No thank you, ah...what else is there?, how about Verizon?” She replied “Yes, today at 3:52, do you want that?” “Sure”, I said, knowing our friends Sue and Dave were all lined up to meet us at St. Amand Montrond...it would mean the FIRST French phone call from my new Cellularabroad” cell phone. I was worried. I am NOT a friend of telephones, much less the damned cell phone variety. It was going to be a TEST. She printed the ticket, wished me “Bon Voyage” and I went back to Kelly with the news. I then called Sue and Dave just as the train announcer person began babbling ever so loudly so that I could not hear anything coming from the cell phone. Eventually the message got through and we would be met in Verizon instead at 5:16. I had a draft beer and we whiled our way for the ensuing two and a half hours sitting in the café people watching.


The train of our dreams arrived from wherever it came from on Track 5 and we drove our LUGgage (I do mean LUG) to car No.5 and put the bags aboard with the Kats and took a seat near the rear of the car. Within 10 minutes a young couple approached and pointed to our seats and, of course, found out they were THEIRS...so this is 2nd class RESERVED? Hmmmm. So we moved to the center to the car to seats 31A and 31B as indicated. We arrived at Verizon after several naps of varying length, none to exceed 10 minutes. Now, the REAL TEST...Verizon’s tracks are located through a tunnel with 25 steps required down and a similar number up into the main platform. The BIG BAG...50lbs – 1lb was first and I carried down and came back for the next...a light weight at 40 lbs and then the Kats, and another bag so Kelly could not have to try to balance on those narrow and dangerous stairs with too much weight to bear. She still had her backpack and another bag on top of it all. Once down we trundled the 50 feet underground to the stairs and ramp on the end towards the station and I repeated the efforts on that end. Now I was exhausted, done, finished and through. A few minutes of rest and then to the station and our friends faithfully waiting for us, such a joy to see them! They then drove us to Lignieres and our Maison Blanc to find rest, a beer or two and a bed...Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz


Sunday, April 20, 2014

Meoooow! Grrrrrrrrr! Phtttttttttt, Hissssssss


Mom Kat Abigale is Pissed...er ah...Hissed these days as her now nearly 8 month old kittens Mucca the Magnificent and Cara-Cature bother her by just BEING. She's like parents with children that haven't moved out yet at 25 yrs of age. I'd Grrrrr a bit and Hissssss too believe me! Mine own left the familiar grounds of home nearly perfectly if not employed they found jobs soon enough, they wanted to live elsewhere and soon did move in with others in a like situation or by themselves into something they could afford (not much but it was a roof and had running water). These kittens are staying, as of yesterday the She-Kat Amazonian Turkish Van Bitch is finding a new home TOMORROW. We LOVE her dearly but the hourly, "minutely" hisssssss and grrrrrrr fest has to stop before someone gets hurt...and it MIGHT BE HER! A young man we know as our plumber friend in days gone by NEEDS a Kat is coming to visit her Monday. Abigale is so dear and sweet and lap familiar that she would make him a fine companion we think. She still has a good bit of kitten in her too being only 18 months old or thereabouts, likes to play with anything she sees on the floor and is a student of the hours long window watch as well as a fine bed warmer at night, and she has all her shots and a transponder chip inserted and is spayed as well.. We shall see.

We are busy finishing up the Spring eBay sales. We've done exceptionally well this spring in fact and I've managed to move some old model airplane kits and shortwave radios for good money too.

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