Time Marches On

May 8^th is VE Day here in Europe, marking the day of Germany’s unconditional surrender in WWII, in 1945. It’s a national holiday here in France and what I find most touching is that villages across the nation celebrate those soldiers who gave their lives in the wars.

Leaving My Cares Behind...or So I'd Thought

My vacation started off auspiciously enough.

I Need a Vacation!

All too soon the plumber was wrapping up his last day before leaving on vacation for two weeks. In France, vacations are inviolable, and virtually everyone takes at least two weeks in August, sometimes the entire month. I was arguably lucky my guy was only going away for half the month. It took until 8pm that Friday to finish doing what he needed to do to get my shower operable. I was grateful he hadn't insisted on leaving at 5pm.

Perpetual Plumbing Travails

When I last left off concerning my plumbing travails mid-renovation (that was last year and I'm still in mid-renovation — c'est la vie en France!) I had a newly installed shower with running water, however, the plumber had left before I'd realized he'd failed to install the holder for the shower head. Exhaling, I resolved to make the best of the hopefully short-term lack of a showerhead prop. I stripped down, eager to experience my lovely, large walk-in shower for the first time. I dipped my fingers in. Nope, still cold. I waited patiently for several moments for the hot water — and waited, and waited. Odd, I thought. The new hot water heater was just overhead. Ten minutes later, I still had nothing but cold water. I was surprised that the steam coming from my ears wasn’t sufficient to heat the water.

The Laissez-faire Nous Lifestyle

It was with considerable trepidation that I returned to my blog to see just how long it’s been since I'd added anything. Although I was relieved to see it hadn’t been an entire year as I’d feared, I was only missing that marker by a matter of weeks. Where does the time go?I

(I know where it goes. I spend so much time on the computer editing other people's books for publication that I can't bear to spend another minute typing, whether on my own manuscript or my blog. It's all I can do sometimes to keep up on e-mails. I resolve to do better...soon.)

Indeed it’s a year to be late, at least here in France. When I’d returned in late March, after having missed a flood-ridden winter—it was pretty rainy in the Algarve but nothing like they’d suffered here—we had two glorious weeks of spring followed by about seven weeks of solid rain. It felt more like seven months.

Planting starts earlier here than I’m used to, coming from the NY area, but instead of putting out flowers and veggies in March and April, we were forced to wait until mid-June for seedlings. Only today did my first cherry tomato hint at orange and my squash, although threatening to take over and infiltrate the neighboring garden, have yet to produce a single bloom. I’ve never had good luck with peppers in the States before so I’m delighted to see up to 13 fruits on a single plant at this stage, and about 16 baby eggplants (aubergines, as they’re known here) on my first and only plant—in a pot no less. 

The only thing fully harvestable, aside from lettuces (which bolted as soon as they’d started to leaf out, thanks to temps shooting up into practically unheard of 90s once the rain stopped) are the carrots, which look riotously happy in their tiny four-foot-square raised bed. Those at least I got seeded before the rains came and they didn't seem to mind so much. I pulled the first ones today to make a carrot tarragon dish for tomorrow’s picnic.

I remember my first foray into veggie gardening, after having bought my first house in 1996, inspired by my next-door neighbor Janis (whose husband Milt only half-kiddingly complained that she'd given up some edible gardening in favor of flowers, after having seen me go crazy). I bought these wonderful Earth boxes, not being sure how great my soil was, and proudly told Janis I'd planted zucchini. 

"Do you think half a dozen seedlings is enough for one person?" I asked. Janis, to her credit, kept a straight face and just said, "Oh, that should be plenty." I had grated zucchini in the freezer for three years.

I will endeavor shortly to resume the aborted tale of last summer’s renovation, which, in true French style, isn’t anywhere near finished, although thankfully most of what remains is cosmetic, such as replacing missing stones in the walls. However, I have an operational kitchen now, after having waited for three years, and it has proved well worth the wait, as has my new bathroom which is blissfully modern and clean, despite ongoing plumbing problems, the legacy of the disastrous plumber I ended up firing after having paused my blog posting. But that's fodder for another post...soon, I promise. 

In the meantime, the temps have dropped from the 90s to 80, promising to rise again in two days, so the garden is calling...

Plumbing Doldrums

The idea had always been to get the bathroom fully operational so that we could then start dismantling the old bathroom to convert it into a small kitchen. Much like the clutter-bug who starts organizing one corner of the house only to get distracted by messes in other areas to where nothing gets accomplished by the end of the day, a dozen different jobs have begun and nothing’s been finished. This is the way my plumber operates.

A Rather Taxing Life in France...

Work was either blessedly or cursedly slow for me in May, June and July, depending on how you look at it. This gave me some anxious moments as, once I'd committed to going forward with the work on the house and realized I would fall perilously low in France-based capital, the social security bureau of France finally got their act together and accepted my application to get into the French medical and pension system and hit me with an estimated assessment for 2010, 2011 and 2012 of €30,000.  

When I regained consciousness several days later,

What the...?

When the plumber arrived, I felt a frisson of excitement—this was really starting to happen!

The garage, as I showed him, was already full of items awaiting their new homes: a new hot water heater, three sinks and faucets (a real luxury when you consider I’ve been living the past five months with just one viable sink, in the kitchen), a new glass shower and shower pan, a dishwasher, oven, sliding closet doors and rails for my first ever closet in this house, and a slew of cabinets from IKEA in varying stages of assembly, including the vanity and medicine chest for the new bath.

Inching Forward with the Impending Renovation

After much searching, pleading with anyone and everyone I knew, and multiple phone calls, finally I had found my plumber. Not only that, he spoke a very little English (about on par with my French) and he had an electrician he could recommend.

Monsieur, are you thinking of me?

I have been astonished at how time consuming it has proved to not only get names of plumbers and electricians that locals actually feel confident recommending but how difficult it is to actually get quotations. Had I known four months ago that I'd only just be finalizing this now, I think I would have given up.

Wildlife Here in the Brenne, in the Land of the Lakes

I thought I'd take a welcome break from coughing up stone dust (kicked up by these admittedly minor renovations as some of these houses go), and share a few nature photographs taken by Peter Street

And We're Off...

The much anticipated (and arguably equally dreaded) renovation work has begun.

No Water Shortage Here

Going back to when I first returned home from Portugal, it was two days before my birthday.

No sooner than I had gotten in the door and turned the water back on, I discovered that my neighbors hadn't exaggerated when they said we'd had an extraordinary, truly unheard of cold spell during my absence, several straight weeks of temps getting down to -17C/2F.

A Day in the Life of...

Well, it's easily three months since I bid adieu to Portugal (and apparently my good intentions to update this blog weekly.) But it has been a relatively busy three months.

Several people have asked me over the past months (okay, it might be past years) to describe what a typical day is for me here in France. I've hesitate simply because when you work from home like I do, it's not terribly exciting. I mean, the work can be exciting for me but hardly bears up in the telling.

But just before I'd left for Portugal this past January, I'd sent what was intended to be a quick synopsis to a friend here on evening who'd asked how my day had gone:

Adeus a Portugal; Bonjour encore, la France

Our six weeks in the western end of the Algarve in Portugal just flew by, one glorious day after another where I more often than not sat inside working instead of enjoying the sun but was still happy to be there. We did take the occasional walks together on the beach, my friend and I and our brother-and-sister dogs. The promised heated pool never materialized, sadly, as there had been a cold spell when we first arrived and they just couldn’t get it up to temperature fast enough to make it cost-effective—we were only paying to heat it once it got up to the promised temp, which it never did, despite trying for about 10 days. Still, that didn't stop us from sitting around it, soaking up the sun during the warm afternoons.

Bienvenue à Portugal

God has a sense of humor. Or at least He has a way of drawing contrasts in order to amplify our appreciation of certain creature comforts that we may have been taking for granted.

Saturday morning, my friend and I packed the car with our suitcases and the dogs and began our seven-week sojourn with a four-day amble down to the southwest corner of the Algarve in Portugal, spending our first two nights at Saint-Jean-de-Luz, by Biarritz, followed by another overnight seven or so hours south of that, before arriving here in Lagos yesterday evening.

La Nouvelle Année the French Way

This year I received what I've been told is an inordinate honor — an invitation to spend New Year's Eve at the home of a French family over dinner. Even to be invited for simple aperitifs on any given day is an honor if you're a foreigner (or ex-pat, as the Brits prefer to refer to themselves) but a formal holiday?

Joyeux Noël

This is why I don't make New Year's resolutions. I not all that long ago resolved to maintain my blog weekly (what was I thinking?) and yet here it is about six weeks since the last post and two months before that. This is why my New Year's resolutions typically boil down to one: don't make any New Year's resolutions (particularly after a glass or two of Champagne).

Finding Peace

November 11^th is Armistice Day in Europe, marking the day the Allies and the Germans signed the peace treaty ending World War One. It was deliberately scheduled at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month. An 11-11-11 to signify that it truly was all quiet on the western front. So it’s a national holiday here.

Remembering Fallen Friends

   A number of years ago when I was working in downtown Manhattan, a co-worker offered to give me a ride in his helicopter. I met him that Saturday morning at Linden Airport in northern New Jersey.
   "There are no doors on this thing?" I asked, as I struggled to secure the seatbelt.
   Richie gave me a wicked smile. "Let me know if it gets too much for you," he taunted. I'd have to fall out, I decided, before I would scream and at that point he probably wouldn't hear me anyway.