The Writing Continues

Day Five and I'm at word count 9154, putting me at nearly 20% of my November goal.

It's been a stressful day not because of the crazed dogs wrestling all over the place or the pressure of hitting the 8335-cumulative-word mark I'd set for today, or even being unhappy with the quality of my work. It's because I was writing about my first day in Spain.

That was the day I was robbed on the motorway. March 3rd. 2007. 1:30PM. On the AP7-E15 Motorway from Barcelona, just south of Valencia. Due as much to my own stupidity and lack of sufficient caution--I've never been the suspicious type--as just being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Reliving the entire circumstance word by word, trying to portray the very real fear I'd experienced, caused my hair follicles to tingle and my skin grow clammy. A sweat while writing? Come on! But maybe it means the telling is good; I can only hope.

Those aching, rigid ropes in my neck are telling me it's time to call it a day.

A Dedicated Month for Writing

Today is day four of my 30-day November National Novel Writing Month commitment. (See http://www.NaNoWriMo.org for details, if you're interested.)

All renovation and decorative work has come to a screeching halt so I can hit my daily quota of 1667 words per day. I'm cheating actually--being what is known as a NaNoWriMo Rebel--by using this goal to work on my nonfiction travel memoir instead of penning a completely new novel as is the general point of this now international project. It appears more than 270,000 folks around the world are participating this year. My goal is to hammer out as much of this first draft by end of November as I can.

I tried this project last year and despite an ambitious travel schedule through various states on my trip back to the USA, I managed to get 50,000 words written on a historical fiction draft. That book has been set aside while I work on the nonfiction, simply because it's allegedly easier to publish nonfiction.

The challenge this year is to do it despite babysitting my Tilly's brother for an entire week while my friend is visiting the UK. The two of them tear around like absolute maniacs until they have no choice but to drop from sheer exhaustion. One might argue they keep each other occupied and therefore free me up to write. But we're still in the house-training stage and accidents happen mainly when they're doing just that, playing hard. And they're irresistible when tearing around at top speed playing tag.

If my fingers could fly across the keyboard as fast as they fly across the floor and up and down the furniture, well, I'd probably finish the entire book this month. Now there's a goal!

Painting and Pet Peeves

A few days ago my neighbor and I took a break from the exterior stone work on his house to redo the interior walls of his bedroom.

We removed layers of pink and turquoise wallpaper down to the plaster. (I was told the doors, now an off-white, were bright yellow when he moved in.) The idea was to paint the room a simple bright white as, facing north, it can be quite dark.

Christopher opened his new tub of paint and we looked at it aghast. Mind you, I'd been previously warned how bad the paint can be here, and how brutally expensive nonetheless. This looked like milky water with a dollop of white resting on the bottom. Despite prolonged stirring, the watery mix dripped off the wall without any pretext at concealment. Chris looked at me in despair. However, I had a solution.

I possessed a 15-litre container (roughly 4 American gallons) of what I was told was the best French paint, Dulux Valentine, for 100 euros (about $150.00). Thus far, I'd used it on two small walls in the kitchen and a bit of the bathroom so I had most of it left. Christopher retrieved it from my house while I entertained Tilly, my 11-week-old puppy. I'd brought her because she has exhibited real separation anxiety issues and will yowl for hours on end if I have the temerity to leave her home while I go next door to work. You can hear her yowling through the closed windows. It's heartbreaking. Okay, okay, she's got me completely wrapped around her paws and she knows it.

Anyway, it wasn't long before we were back at work, me up on a ladder doing the brush work along the trim while Chris eagerly slapped the roller over the walls. Unnoticed by me, Chris had slopped a large blob of paint atop the flattened cardboard we were using in lieu of a drop cloth. Unnoticed, that is, until I descended the ladder.

I gasped as I looked at the blob in horror. Tiny white paw prints led straight from it to the bedroom door, beyond into the kitchen and out of sight. Now it was my turn to howl.

"Oh, my God, she's walked through the paint!" Chris immediately said not to worry; it would clean up easily.

"But where is she?" I cried. I envisioned sweet little white paw marks drying on his dark chocolate brown sofa...or worse.

Fortunately, Tilly's penchant for brushes and brooms meant she'd only gotten as far as the tiled kitchen, pausing by the fireplace to steal the dustpan broom Christopher uses to sweep the ashes from his wood-burning fireplace. As we burst into the room, she sat contentedly by the fire chewing the sooty bristles, ignoring us as her paws gripped the handle, contrasting a gleaming white. "Blanc satin luminieux" to be precise.

Well, at least she hadn't licked her feet.

Madame Vitesse

There was recently a bit of excitement on our otherwise sedate street outside the village of Martizay.

Emil, a neighbor, is an elderly stone mason of substantial repute. At age 72, he's often seen scrambling across his roof with no safety equipment, and is currently single-handedly building an addition to his house, cutting each and every stone by hand. This is when he's not tending his massive garden, often sharing the bounty with my other neighbor Christopher or me, as well as his ongoing advice regarding the stonework Christopher's doing on his house.

I was taking a brief break from my mortar work to make Chris and me some coffee when I crossed Emil's path. He was doubled over, clearly in pain. When I reached him, I saw blood dripping down his hand past his wrist. To my horror I saw he'd virtually severed his left index finger. The bone was exposed a quarter-inch, the flesh neatly chewed off on all sides halfway down.

I called for Christopher as Danielle, Emil's wife, emerged from the house sobbing, bandage in hand. We quickly wrapped the finger and I raced home for my car keys; Danielle was clearly in no shape to drive. When I pulled my car up, I was horrified to see Emil removing the bandage to show some of the neighbors. I shouted at him to stop but it turned out it was a good thing--one man raced off and returned moments later with a huge bag of ice. Christopher got Emil and Danielle into the backseat and jumped in beside me. The street was lined with neighbors by this point (talk about bad news traveling fast!) as we flew by, heading for the emergency room in Le Blanc 20 kilometers away.

Mercifully, the road to Le Blanc is mostly straight and does not meander through frequent villages as most roads do. I haven't driven this fast since I was on Germany's autobahn. We hit over 160 kph (100 mph) on this 70-kph/44-mph route and I knew in my bones we were going to be pulled over for speeding. We were. A policeman stepped out into the road, his expression incredulous, and waved us in angrily. I'd already been rehearsing what I might say in my limited French, fingers clenching the steering wheel. I called out, "L'amputation. Son doigt." One look at Emil hunched over a bag of ice, bloody bandage visible, was enough for him to step back and wave us on. God bless him. We took off.

Moments later we roared into Le Blanc. Thankfully Christopher knew precisely where the hospital was and I found I could even follow Danielle's directions in French despite the stress of the moment.

Christopher and I got a coffee, sat outside and then took a short walk into the village to burn off our anxious energy. When we returned, we were told that they would reattach Emil's finger. Danielle appeared, almost cheerful in her relief. We took her home. On the way, she nicknamed me "Mme. Vitesse" or "Madame Speed." The nurse had told her that it was only because we arrived so quickly that they would be able to reattach the finger.

Reattach it they did. Emil was discharged the very next morning and Danielle brought him home. He was immediately out in the garden harvesting bunches of grapes, peaches and tomatoes to gift us, returning a second time with a huge bucket of walnuts. I alternately thanked and scolded him, saying he should rest his hand. He smiled. Later we heard him outside working again. Christopher and I looked at each other in disbelief.

It remains to be seen whether the surgery will be a success. Chris has since spotted Emil carrying a weighty bucket in his heavily bandaged left hand. But for now Emil seems to delight in showing everyone how a mere severed finger won't slow a Frenchman down.

Christopher says if construction doesn't work out for me, I might have a career as an ambulance driver.

Is There a Construction Site Career in My Future?

For once I finally have a viable excuse for neglecting my blog so shamefully. I've got a new job--of sorts.

The day of my last post a month ago, my neighbor Christopher suggested perhaps we would both make better progress on our houses if we worked together, a barter system of work hours. He's been pointing the exterior of his house for months now and I can't begin to imagine how tedious it's been working alone. I would have quite given up in despair long ago.

For those of you unfamiliar with pointing (as I was), it consists of drilling out most of the existing mortar between the stones and replacing it with new. In this case, a rendering or top coat of stucco completely conceals the stone and must be chipped off before the pointing can begin.

This photo is of the far end of Christopher's house. The upper right portion of the photo is the original condition of the house. Below it the rendering has been removed and it's awaiting new mortar between the stones. On the left, running down the length of the house where the stone is less apparent is the finished product--new mortar has been applied, scraped off when partially dry and then, when completely hard, the stones have been burnished with a wire brush to remove any stray bits of mortar and whiten up the limestone block.

Christopher's and my houses were once all part of the same farm, his being the main farmhouse. In fact, the elderly farmer who was born in that house and grew up there still comes by occasionally to see the progress Christopher's making on 'his' house. He's an extremely nice man, this farmer, and was one of the first villagers to attempt to engage me in conversation. He was passing by while I was doing an archaeological dig of sorts in the garden--I knew there were plants buried in there somewhere! At the time I didn't know he once owned my house as well as most of the other buildings on my street. The entire street was apparently part of the farm once upon a time. (My house, I'm told, was built some time before 1850.)

But I digress. Christopher's tentative suggestion that I help him out was received with far more enthusiasm than he'd expected. I want to expose some of the stone wall in my living room interior so this would no doubt be an excellent introduction to what would be involved.

The work has proved far more exhausting than I'd anticipated but I find I enjoy it nonetheless. I man the cement mixer (not so unlike the commercial Hobart in my sister's former bakery), making up the mortar or chaux blanche of wet sand, lime chalk and water. I then wheel barrows of it to the scaffolding where I either hoist buckets up a ladder alongside the scaffolding to where Christopher is working or, if he's near the roof line, tie the buckets to rope and he hauls them up.

I did manage to overdo it while trying my hand at the jackhammer drill (it chips the rendering off to reveal the stones beneath) and strained my wrist but I think my biceps are starting to rival Michelle Obama's!

Here you can see the stones awaiting re-mortaring on the bottom; on the top is the finished product.

Mornings are now spent pointing while afternoons we switch to building a garden wall with all the extra stone lying about the farm. We fill the core of the wall with all the rubble from the rendering, a great way to clean up and recycle!

It's my hope that once Christopher sets a price on the two rooms he owns that abut my house that I can afford to buy them. Then we'll really have a renovation job on our hands as they're nothing more than stone shells. I envision them as a future kitchen and dining room.

In the meantime, perhaps we can collaborate on a new book: Pointers on Pointing!

I Have a New Roommate!

Not quite two weeks ago, a friend asked me to accompany her to someone's home in nearby Cussay to see a litter of puppies. She was considering adopting a dog. I was to come to prevent her from making any impulse mistakes. (And she wanted ME for this job?)

Our first indication of danger upon arrival was the sight of the litter's father: a pure white Coton du Tulear, the breed of dog my friend and I had both fallen in love with when we housesat two of them out in Veyrier-du-Lac, a lakeside home in the French Alps. (It is those two dogs whose picture graces the home page of my blog, soon now to be replaced.) The mother was tiny, sweet-tempered, and the color of ashes; a terrier of some sort.

The danger became full-blown when the puppies emerged from beneath a wardrobe. There were three and the family intended to keep just one, a pale apricot-colored female. My friend would have to choose between the remaining male and female puppies, just seven weeks old at this point. I turned to her and said, "We're in serious trouble here." I knew that whichever one she didn't choose was coming home with me.

My friend chose the male and I was delighted. I was secretly favoring the female which had lovely charcoal and café au lait markings on her; her brother was completely white.

This past Tuesday we returned to bring them home. We are hopelessly besotted. My friend called hers Finlay, or Finn for short, and promptly christened my little one Tilly. The name stuck. No question it suits her.

Fruits of My Labors

It appears I've really adapted to the French pace of living. I've been in my tiny new house for two months now: the wallpaper has been torn off in some areas but by no means all; the paint has been applied in some areas but nowhere near all; I need an electrician (the first one decidedly did not work out, and I procrastinate, fearing technical speak in a language I can't yet speak); the faucets in the shower, kitchen and bathroom sinks continue to leak, as does the kitchen sink trap despite my efforts with wrench and Teflon tape; there is still no kitchen to speak of although at least a thoughtful neighbor in the next village who's a professional builder wired up my stove this week as a courtesy while we stood chatting about my kitchen ideas (he's going to install whatever cabinetry I buy); and my food remains stocked haphazardly on the floor in crates. So it's pretty much life as usual here in rural France. At least no one seems to think there's anything out of the ordinary. It definitely takes the pressure off.

One thing I have managed to get up and running, so to speak, is my garden. I've finally constructed 3 four-foot-square raised beds with the help of my neighbor Christopher (well, okay, I held the wood while he did all the actual work). As I prepared to level them, I suddenly realized I no longer owned a shovel. Sighing, I resigned myself to digging out the trenches with nothing more than a hand trowel. Hands bruised and aching, I sat back to survey my work. Well, at least the beds were now level so I didn't have to worry about water pooling in one end and drowning my future seedlings.

I lugged 13 large bags of topsoil, compost, aged horse manure and peat moss (the latter the only item that didn't feel like it weighed 50 kilos), home from the local Bricomarché (France's sub-equivalent to a Home Depot) and dumped them, along with the entire contents of my brimming compost heap, sheets of clean newsprint saved from my packing materials, and as many garden scraps as I could scrape up, into the beds, creating a combination lasagna/square-foot gardening-style setup. I felt a sense of accomplishment far outweighing the actual magnitude of the work done.

Thus, today, during brief spells of sun broken by mad dashes of pelting rain, I've managed to seed one of the three beds with a fall crop: 32 garlic, 32 radish, 16 spinach, 62 arugula and 64 white onion. Elsewhere I have existing two dozen young leeks happily reaching upward--donated by an elderly French woman whose garden vastly exceeds my own; eight tomato plants; various herbs; and a pattypan squash plant that was here when I arrived, and which seems content not only to engulf my garden and patio but has apparent designs on most of my village. I'd write more about it but, frankly, "Little Shop of Horrors" was more entertaining. Only today as I gingerly pushed aside immense prickly leaves in search of squash to harvest, I discovered that, buried beneath, next to the equally dwarfed thyme bush, I have chives growing. Who knew?

Recent days have been spent storing massive amounts of fruits--my neighbor has lots of fruit trees--vegetables, and the ensuing sauces and soups, inside my little freezer to the point where I can hear it groan every time I approach it with yet another container in hand. All this with nary a kitchen to speak of and no work surface beyond a cutting board propped atop two burners. (Thank you for those gratifying gasps of awe. They make it all worthwhile.)

Well, enough boring tales of kitchen garden miscellany. There's a vat of tomato sauce on the stove that's calling my name, barely audible above the wails of the freezer....

Getting Down to Work...Finally!

I just spent the last few days at the wedding celebration of friends in France who live just 90 minutes from me. Now it's time to really buckle down and get at least some work done on the 'new' house. (Can you call it 'new' if it's actually 150+ years old?)

Here you can see the picture of my kitchen or cuisine, as it's known in France, before the furniture arrived but after I'd ripped down all the wallpaper that was, well, shall we say, just not to my taste? I'm told the French love wallpaper. I suspect it's because they don't really have to finish the walls behind it adequately; it forgives many sins. At least that's what I'm assuming based on what I found behind it. But although I'm still living among unadorned walls covered with chipped plaster that often weep stone dust, I appreciate the wisdom of going slowly.

In any case, some of you might be wondering why I call this space my kitchen. Or perhaps the sink gives it away. Because that's essentially all that came with it: a sink and a little cabinet with 2 electric burners on top (incorrectly wired, I'm told by my new electrician who thankfully speaks English.) No other cabinets, no oven, no refrigerator, not so much as a shelf.

Despite the fact that France essentially closes down in August for vacation, I'm trying to put together a semblance of a temporary kitchen. It is my hope to eventually (meaning in the next two years) break through the rear wall into two additional rooms that are part of my house but owned by my neighbor, Christopher. He has expressed a desire to sell them to me and will add some exterior land area which will easily double my garden space. I would love to build my permanent kitchen in the rear of the house. Right now, the two additional rooms are naught but shells in need of complete overhaul, although one room has tiles on the floor; the other has a dirt floor.

But in the meantime, I need to establish some sort of kitchen for myself if only to get my food out of crates and off the floor! The arrival of my first houseguests on the 20th of August--former housesit clients from my 2007 housesit on the outskirts of Vienna who are stopping over for a night while in transit from southern to northern France--is just the motivation I need. Still, I find myself with limited options and will likely be ordering some kitchen storage from an American site on the internet.

Stay tuned....