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.

 

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.