And breath!!!!!!

It's been another jam-packed, fun-filled week here (not) but I suppose as each day goes by hopefully things are closer to getting back to normal (Caree, I feel for you)! On the positive side we had our latest board game evening at Jordan and Jen's place on Saturday night and as some of the games just go straight over my head (too French-focussed), I seem to end up being Charlie's chief dinosaur chaser - not that I mind. At the moment we're reenacting the Mufasa and Scar fight from The Lion King (using dinosaurs), but I'm happy to say Mufasa wins every time in our version!

I saw snippets of the US inauguration but just like any lengthy ceremony, there's no way I would ever sit down and watch the whole thing. One thing that did strike me though, was that at one point there was a shot taken from outside the White House and while of course security was ramped up by about 1000 per cent, I remember that when I was working at the World Bank (1985-1987) I would often walk down to the park near the Washington Monument at lunchtime and you could virtually stand and look in at the White House through the railings! As time went by security was heightened more and more and it kinda made me sad to see how over the years the White House became (like so many other places, I suppose) a virtually inviolable fortress! Heck where I worked our building was right on Lake Geneva and our security guards were basically just car park attendants. And then, over the years, massive gates were installed, turnstyle entrances for the staff showed up and x-ray machines became the norm. How sad is that!

The electrician showed up to begin work on Monday and after spending the entire day just sitting around but trying to stay out of his way, I decided on Tuesday that I would leave him to it and do whatever running around I had to do. I suppose you shouldn't really leave workmen in your place alone but I think he was glad to get me out of his way and in any case, he knew I had cameras in the house - not that I have anything worth stealing! So I called up the lady from the food bank and made arrangements with her to take six trash bags full of blankets, sleeping bags and coats to her place. She was recovering from a knee replacement so couldn't drive out to meet me, but in any case I was glad to get out the house. When I finally found her house in the back of beyond I commented what a lovely place she had but, being alone (she'd already told me that) didn't she find it a lot to keep up with, like I did? And so over the next 15 minutes I think I found out her entire life story, how she'd bought the house after divorcing her serial cheater husband and got to decorate it exactly how she wanted and spend her salary/pension how she wanted too! It was weird because I don't know this woman, but in the space of a 15 minute coffee break I think I got her entire life story - not that I mind - I'll talk to anyone! So then I asked her if her house was anywhere near where the squatters had moved in (she hadn't heard of it) but apparently, while it was in the same village, it wasn't exactly close. In the end I believe it was a group of Roma gypsies who had taken over a house and land that had belonged to someone who had recently died (apparently they check out local obituaries for houses likely to be empty) and while the police had got them out pretty quickly, it would seem that it was not before they'd managed to make off with the huge copper flower pot outside the Mairie!

They have them on video, but fat lot of
good it did!

Chantal from sewing club was asking me about the squatters as she lives close by so I told her about the FB group I follow if she was worried about it. Chantal volunteers at the village library so I showed her some of the pictures I'd seen on FB that proved librarians actually do have a sense of humour! She loved them!

The lady I ordered the sewing trolley for did indeed pay me for it so I'm hoping that's the end of it, but we'll see, I guess. Goodness knows it took me ages to learn to stop "doing" for other people - my ex-husband's US taxes (hey, your're the American, figure it out), his DUIs (why don't you ask some of your drinking buddies), people at work wanting a breakdown of their education grant status per child (I'm sorry, you'll have to ask Mrs. R in Finances for that - it was their decision not to forward these to staff members). It's not normally in my nature, but sometimes it's just too easy to allow other people to get you to do things for them because they're either too lazy or because you've always just done everything for them. I do remember once watching the programme Catfished on Youtube when they interviewed a rather lovely English lady who had been taken in by someone she'd been talking to online for about six months. All of a sudden he was "trapped in the Middle East because his employer wouldn't let him return until he'd paid for material that was broken", or "his son had been in an accident and they wouldn't let him leave hospital until his bill was settled" - you know, that kind of stuff! She was desperately hurt when she realized what was going on because she thought they had a genuine connection, but everytime he spun her some kind of sob story she would just say "oh that's terrible, what are you going to do about it"? So the scammer never got a penny out of her and so far, she's the only one I've seen that hasn't ultimately been scammed. Mind you, did any of you see the recent story of a French woman who divorced her husband and sent hundred of thousands of €€€€€€ to Brad Pitt to help him with his hospital bills? Her husband was a very wealthy man so she completely shot herself in the foot on this one, but can you imagine falling for some of the worst photoshops in the world and losing your marriage over it!!!

Poor Brad, I'm thinking of setting
up a Go Fund Me for him!

And finally, my electrician is finding more nightmares to put right with every plug he removes. I have a small space heater in the living room for when it's exceptionally cold, although I rarely use it because I tend to live on the first floor anyway. Well he showed me how the wiring there had started to melt and would most likely eventually have gone up the same way as the top bedroom at some point. He told me that everywhere there was a plug socket on an external wall, there was no insulation so my house was just a huge leaky sieve, with cold air blowing in through all these outlets. Mind you, he also told me that the lightbulbs throughout the house were waayyy too powerful and to get them changed to max 5w bulbs and "stop heating my house through the lightbulbs". When I told him I'd run out and buy some he told me not to bother as they were cheaper on Amazon and within 24 hours I'd received the whole lot! In the "TV room", where I spend most of my time, I have eight spotlights and he showed me how these bulbs, again, were way too powerful and had started to melt the transformers that had been installed when we'd had the false ceiling put in about 20 years ago. Basically the whole place was a potential tinderbox! Everytime he came across something he called me over to take a look at it so that I was aware of what was going on, so right now I'm in the process of changing all the bulbs in the house which, he said, I should see reflected in my electricity bill in short order!

I'm gonna have a helluva lot of
cleaning to do pretty soon!

I left him in the house the other day while I ran out to drop a carload of stuff off at the charity shop and on the way back picked sandwiches up for both of us for lunch. He was surprised as he'd never had someone do that for him, but Jordan told me he'd frequently had a little old grandma insist he sit down with them and eat when he's been out on a job on his own. So on Friday he showed up with croissants for both of us for breakfast - nice huh! Anyhow I reckon I have another week of his being here all day every day but I'll be relieved when it's over and I can feel more secure in my own house. He was telling me that his family originally came to France as refugees from Somalia but he has spent most of his life here as he arrived at a very young age! Blimey, with me being a Brit, the Bangladeshis coming in to do the plumbing/decorating and my tiler being from Kosovo, it's starting to feel a bit like the United Nations only without the flag and the diplomatic status!