Working Ourselves To The Bone...

Today we went AT the former "Blue Room", no longer Blue, it is a wonderful,
bright and mind boggling mix of light green and a dark red. It is
absolutely beautiful, fun to look at and USE as the Public Potty downstairs
in Maison Blanche. Truly spectacular to anyone familiar with the dreary old "Blue Room" that served as the guest potty when we did dinners. Tomorrow night our guests the BROWNS, will likely be blown away by how wonderful the space has become.

We have to go North to Issodun to the L'Clerc Supermarket for the veal and
beef that I need to make the Cannelloni that I'm making for the dinner
tomorrow night. I grind my own filling for Cannelloni and need good veal and beef to accomplish the filling (along with Ricotta Cheese and Nutmeg).
It'll be quite a dinner after last nights Indian Extravaganza the Browns and their daughter-chef Sarah presented to us. It was absolutely fabulous!
Many delicious courses and each stood on it's own, very impressive. A memorable dinner indeed!

We got the devise for the roof repair on Maison Blanc, a mere 4500 Euros.
Gasp! I expected a great deal less, perhaps 1200 or so but labor here is
expensive and there is no way I can do any of the patching and replacing.
The roof is 3 stories up, steep and without sheeting, a dangerous task best
left to those who know what they are doing. Expensive and necessary and a
hell of a lot cheaper than replacing the entire thing would be!

First Week of Aout...

The Aoutat biters are baaack! Kelly gets a few and I get many...they are the itchiest little pests that you have evr come across. Harvest Mites they are, Chiggers to some but we all know what damnable critters they are. They crawl on you from their hiding places on the undersides of lefy things and at 1/100th of an inch they aren't to be seen easily. They wander about until a tsty tender spot is found which the then attack until they have eaten a small circle in your flesh and proceed to digest YOU cell by cell till they are full, burp and after a while give it all up and drop off to become adults when they can now go to bars and drink and smoke and carouse with like minded of their kind. Meanwhile I scratch and itch. Kelly paints me with clear fingernail polish which seals the little holes and decreases the itch to something tolerable. The there are the mosquitos hatching in the copious water buckets and troughs in our attic to catch the rainwater before it enters the ceilings of the floors below. Then, of coiurse the BATS fly through every night hunting the mosquitos down, I like the bats a lot. Then theirs the wolverine...but that's another story. So I pour small amounts of light oil in each bucket and hope for the best. I have afixed a mosquito net above my bed which confuses the flying devils enough that the number actually getting to imbibe on my type O blood are few, but some do make it through the bats and netting...scratch, scratch, itch, itch.

It rained through the night last night, I was up twice, once at 2 and again at 5:30 and it was still coming down...not buckets but a good wash anyway. Today the sun came out long enough we could paint the upper area of the "Blue Room" potty off the laundry annex. I gave it three coats during the afternoon, it looks ok so tomorrow a bit of touch up and onto hanging paper again. Then to afix the water glass holder, toilet paper holder and towel rack to the stone walls. Where's my impact drill and bits?

Tonights dinner is Scallop Risotto with bacon but not until the rain subsides enough so that the flood that engorges my kitchen during these downpours subsides somewhat. I hope the roof repair guy gets the devise to us soon, I know he can't start until late September but it would help my frame of mind just knowing it was going to get fixed and soon.