Better stick to paper cups!

Temperatures dropped quite dramatically last week and are really not normal for July right now but I don't mind that one bit - I start to feel alive again! I don't doubt they'll start soaring again soon but for the moment I'm enjoying the break. Things with my favourite neighbour are still fraught and apart from the emotional turmoil she is pretty much on her knees with fatigue as she will find out this week if her buyers have been accepted for their loan - if so, then it's all systems go. Her daughter is helping her as much as she can and she really has done an amazing job already of getting rid of so much stuff but ....! They say the three most stressful things you can go through are the death of a spouse, divorce and moving so I can only begin to imagine how much she she has had on her plate. She asked me round for coffee again the other day (to talk obviously) and I could see that she was waivering so just said "you've made your bed for the time being and if you don't give it a shot you'll never know, will you (about moving back to her home town) but if you find out for whatever reason that it isn't working out, you know you can always come back - don't hesitate to do so out of pride or embarassment because nobody will care"! I think as it's coming down to the wire it's hitting her and while neither of her children want her to go, as I said, if she doesn't go for it now, she'll never know and probably regret not giving it a shot! Mind you, seeing what she's going through trying to empty what was a very orderly, well-kept house is spurring me on to get rid of more and more stuff. At the moment I'm dragging pieces of wood up from the basement to take to the tip (hopefully someone can find a use for them) and while it's hard work physically, everything that goes out of this house makes the air feel just a tad more breathable!

Thankfully I'm also finding out that I'm spending less time on Youtube going down rabbit holes. Oh I still enjoy some of it but I'm absolutely sick of AI and the "startled" AI generated memes some creators are using or the AI generated voiceovers. I find it really irritating and while I'm sure AI has many positive uses I'm not so sure it won't make things much more negative in the long run!

The other day I was awoken at 6 am by a text message from my ex-husband simply saying "what's your email"? No "hi, how are you doing, how are the kids, and/or sorry for waking you up at 6 am", just "what's your email". My first reaction was annoyance because next month we would have been married 40 years and I have always had the same email address. He obviously also has my telephone number (since that's where he sent the text message to), can access me through Facebook or through my kids, so yeah buddy, you have my email address already so look the damn thing up yourself as I no longer "wife" for you! I didn't say any of that, of course, because I know damn well if he contacts me it's only some chaos or other he will be stirring up so I just ignored it. I happened to mention it to Jen when I was watching Charlie the other day and she told me words to the effect that he said he was regretting moving back to the US and, more importantly, was missing out on the grandchildren!!! I don't know if that means he wants to move back here but while he could pretty easily do so, he would have to reapply for residency. He'd definitely meet the financial requirements but since this idiot cancelled his wonderful post-retirement medical insurance with his employer he is now under his gf's medical, so he'd have to look for something separately. They already tried to get her into France when they first got together but were refused so if he did want to come back I'm assuming it would be on his own! Cue the intrigue. Of course I may be reading waaayyyy too much into a simple text message but I can/could read this guy like a book so I'll be curious to see what's going on when he comes out here next month!

Talking of looking after Charlie, as is now our custom we went to the park and then went to a café for a drink before going to pick Elynn up from daycare. So he's sitting there telling me that when you drink from a glass you have to be sooooo careful not to break it because you can get hurt. I told him that was very true, but then he goes "and then the policeman will come and put you in jail"! Huh???? I told him that wasn't true but he insisted it was. And then if you managed to escape they would throw you into the lava from a volcano! Huh???? And then if you escaped from that you'd have to run to the ocean and try to swim away, but the nasty shark would start chasing you. So I asked him if there were no kindly dragons who could save you (we're into kindly dragons at the moment) and he said "nope, they're all asleep"! That was when the guy at the next table cracked up laughing, saying he'd got quite the imagination hadn't he. The moral of the story, therefore, would seem to be only buy paper cups from now on!

Anyhoo, back to the plot. Yesterday I went on our old fogies day trip to the Col de la Forclaz. I wasn't sure if I'd been there before (turns out I hadn't) but I can't believe such a lovely spot is only about 90 minutes from home and I'd "missed it" all these years! Our first stop was at the Ecomuseum of Wood and Forestry and we spent about 90 minutes being entertained by a very well-informed young man who knew his stuff inside out. There was us (a bus load of oldies) and a group of littles, about Charlie's age, so the noise level was pretty much off the scale. He explained to us that this particular valley had once been very lush (still is as far as I'm concerned) but deforestation had taken its toll, so as early as 1898 steps had been taken to protect it. He showed us how they bought timber down from the mountains over the ages and how it had been possible to do so much with just the use of a watermill, before the advent of electricty. As I say, it really was pretty interesting!

After that we headed up to the Col de la Forclaz for lunch and while the road up was very pretty, it did remind of that heart-stopping drive in the Gorges de Piana in Corsica. As the bus could only take us so far, we had to walk the last 15 minutes up a very steep hill to get to the restaurant. As probably the youngest on the bus, I was praying I wouldn't be on my hands and knees regurgitating a lung while all the others hopped up there like mountain goats, but that never happened. Some people walked slowly with canes but still they made it. Many of the people on the bus I now recognize but since I don't know their names I've given them names in my mind like "the lady from the Benite", "the lady from Intermarché cheese counter", "the man whose teeth don't fit", but the most impressive one has to be the 90 year old lady who was sitting behind me on the way up. I was listening to her and her 79 year old companion talking about "the good old days" and how much they appreciated everything while having pretty much nothing. It was lovely to listen (eavesdrop?) to them talking about how they wore wooden sabots/clogs, made their own butter, used to use communal ovens etc. and then, as we were almost there, she spotted paragliders close to our bus and told the other lady that her granddaughters had offered her a jump as a gift and she'd actually done a tandem jump for her 80th birthday!!! Wow, so she naturally became "Madame Intrepid" (and I want to be her when I grow up)!

Lunch was a reblochonade, which is basically a local reblochon cheese cooked in a brasier (not a brassière for those of you with warped minds), poured over boiled potatoes along with salad and a charcuterie board. As a side note, charcuterie in French refers only to cut meats and if someone volunteered to bring charcuterie to a pot luck they would bring nothing but meat - no veggies or dip. The staff were great, kept coming round to see if we wanted more of anything and I think we were all so very, very impressed with the whole set up. I'm wondering if I might invite everyone up there for Elynn's birthday (on 21st August) and André's birthday on 30th August. I'll have to see how available everyone is at any given date!

Reblochonade!

The only down side was that it was very hot and very loud, but if that's all you have to complain about life isn't too bad at all, is it. The owner came round several times to see if everything was okay and when we were ready to leave he pulled his minibus out and offered to take those with walking difficulties back down to the bus. I walked back down with my 85 year old neighbour on the bus and when he apologized for slowing me down I just laughed and told him this was my natural speed and not to worry!

Lake Annecy!

As we walked down we passed a "more relaxed" little place next to the gift shops and quite honestly I like these places just as much as the bigger, fancier restaurants!

Burger bar!

Drinks bar (when it's open)!

When we got back to the bus our driver asked if we had had time for a digestif and suggested that he bring round his homemade hooch for anyone that wanted to try it. They all do this, and really you only get a thimblefull of firewater (the driver obviously doesn't partake) but it's a nice touch and is a way of saying thank you for the generous hat that is passed around on the way back!

From there he dropped us in Annecy for a couple of hours but since I'm pretty sure everyone on the bus had been to Annecy hundreds of times, most of us walked through the park and sat and had a drink on the lake's edge.

I took this picture not because I'm a creep that likes to hang around kiddies' play areas, but because this is the park where that monster stabbed three babies (and two adults) about three years ago. Thankfully everyone survived but I hope he is rotting in hell in a French prison and will do so for a very, very long time! I ended up having a drink at the local pétanque club where it was nice to watch the games that were taking place. Jordan is trying to teach Charlie but as you might imagine, Charlie just wants to see how far he can throw the ball. Hopefully he will pick it up sooner rather than later because the French take pétanque very, very seriously!

Cooler now!

The horrendously hot weather finally broke last week and we, unusually, are getting temperatures around 25°C (77°F), so just perfect! The cooler weather allows me to get so much more done around here including the "irritating stuff"! When the electrician was here he commented how useless my downstairs vacuum was so I bought a new one for downstairs and then a second for the first floor. The first floor vacuum is working just fine but about two weeks ago I was finding that the ground floor one just wouldn't pick anything up! I was really pissed off as it is less than six months old so I just shoved it into a corner of the garage until I could summon up the energy to tear the bloody thing apart. When I finally did I found that one end of the hose was as near as dammit totally blocked with hard core trash and nothing was getting through to the actual bag! I'm guessing some of that was stuff I'd hoovered up following both the electrician and the plumber's visits but I never expected to find anything so rock solid blocking it. Still, at least it's now sorted. Actually I find that when things malfunction on me (like the AC unit that was shredding wasps) if I leave it until I'm in a better mood, I inevitably end up getting it sorted without throwing a tantrum!

Then to add to my woes, my security system started malfunctioning. I would often get a notification to say that there was a "suspicious vibration" which made me think that their sensors were becoming overly sensitive to any slamming doors, but then I was finding that I couldn't set the alarm via my keyfob so had to go into the app on my phone and do it from there. So I left it and left it until one day I read a message indicating a "sabotage" on access point X. Now I knew darn well that nobody had tried to get in the house but in any case I went round all the downstairs windows/doors and checked the sensors and wouldn't you know it one of them seemed to have moved just a little bit, and was thus preventing my keyfob from working! Thankfully it's all now up and running but don't the little things get you down - or maybe it's just the straw that breaks the camel's back! (As a useless aside, in French that would be "the drop that made the vase overflow")!

Jordan came over the other day as I had offered to give them the AC unit I had on my upper floor and a huge parasol that I had in the basement, which their apartment block can use with the picnic table they've bought for the little park area outside their building. I then asked him to take a look at the enormous wood supply I had down there (not firewood, just old pieces of wood that my ex had stored for "one day when") and he said he might be interested in some of the larger pieces but the rest I could get rid of. So bit by bit I've lugged upstairs an old stereo and music system of my ex's that got dumped in my basement and am now starting hauling the wood too, but I may have to give that a rest for a few days as my elbows are starting to hurt, what with lugging all this heavy stuff up a flight of stairs and then off to the tip!

The other day I got a call from André who had had to take his car to the garage as there seemed to be a problem with the turbo. He's had to leave it for a few days and needed a lift home so off I trotted to pick him up. He was telling me that while much of his organization's budget comes from government contributions, they also have large projects funded by individual grants. Apparently his unit has just received a huge grant for a specific project so his boss told him that he has put him on a post funded by that grant in order to ensure he's on a securely funded post (as much as anything can be secure at the moment) - so that's a bit of good news, at least!

There's been a big hooha in the UK regarding the upcoming film version of Raynor Winn's The Salt Path with information coming out that calls into question much of what she wrote about the reasons behind their losing their home and embarking on the grueling journey along the southern coastal path, and the claims that her husband is/was suffering from a terminal illness! I read the book because everyone was raving about it, but to be honest I got fed up of it after a while. Oh she writes beautifully but I just found it too much "this day it poured and we were soaked, and that day was scorching and we burned", so no, the book didn't do it for me at all. I'm assuming the film will be a success, even though I suspect we haven't heard the last of the revelations (true or otherwise) about the veracity of their story!

When I was over at Jordan and Jen's the other day, Jordan showed me an article where several local Italian restaurants had been raided in connection with money laundering linked to the Calabrese mafia! We used to go to one of those restaurants pretty often as we were quite friendly with the owners. Thankfully they sold up about 20 years ago and are not (I hope) linked to this in any way. Apparently what tipped investigators off was the high turnover of staff, most of whom couldn't speak anything other than Italian!

Then the other day there was a knock at my door and my favourite neighbour just stood there unable to speak. I told her to come in and sit down and she just burst into tears. The sale of her house was signed last week although a moving date has yet to be agreed, so she's in the middle of getting rid of as much as she can and packing up whatever she plans to take with her. She said that the fatigue was getting to her and she found herself ruminating on what the hell she had ever done to deserve being treated so badly by her late husband, with him trying to write her out of her share of the house and block her from receiving a widow's pension (he was unsuccessful in both but managed to screw her over in other ways)! She knew he started cheating on her within two years of their marriage (if not before) and managed to get a job transfer to another area in order to get away from him quite early in their marraige, but he got wind of it and arranged a transfer for himself too and subsequently, over their 50+ year marriage, she had her spirit broken. She said if he hated her that much he could easily have divorced her early on (makes me wonder why his first marriage ended so quickly) but I told her that in my opinion sometimes men like that want all the convenience of having a "wife appliance" at home, the legitimacy of being a "family man" and hey, who was gonna cook his meals and scrub his skivvies if he divorced her. I can't help but think that men (or women) who behave like that have to make "you" into the baddie in order to justify in their own minds their appalling treatment of you! After about an hour she said she felt better and that she was going to go to bed, but I just hate to see her so bruised and battered having, as she said, wasted 50 years of her life on that arsehole!

Last week I drove down to Passy again, but this time not to the lake but to the large outdoor/mountain store as I wanted to get a few things for my walking trips. They have a cafeteria and a restaurant there so I decided to treat myself to lunch in the restaurant and boy was it good. The starter was a mixed melon, olive and feta cheese salad followed by really tender chicken on a bed of bulgur wheat (I didn't bother with dessert). It was so good that I decided I wanted to try and duplicate it myself but haven't gotten around to it just yet. Then this afternoon I decided to pull out a very old Good Food Guide magazine (I must have about 20 years worth) and flick through it while sitting in the garden and low and behold they had the almost identical recipe in a magazine going back to 2016, so I'll definitely be giving this a try now!

Good Food Guide, January 2016

While I was there I noticed that there were quite a few workmen having lunch too, so decided to mention it to Jordan in case he's ever working in the vicinity. Because they move around between different work sites, his employer has a contract with many local restaurants where the employees can spend up to €20 per meal "on the house" and the bill is submitted directly to the employer. The set menu I had was €19 so if they aren't already, it would be a good idea to have this place set up a contract with his employer. Another thing the employer does is put €30 per month onto a kind of credit card for each employee and credits an annual or bi-annual bonus onto it where they can get all kinds of discounts on local attractions, on household goods, or employing a cleaning lady, for example - or use it for pretty much whatever they want. Jordan currently has €800 on his card so they will be using that when they go on holiday in August. It's a pretty nice set up (and fairly common in France) so at least they won't have to worry about spending money when they go away!

And finally, today is Bastille Day (French national day) so yesterday Jen's mom invited us all down to her place to watch the local fireworks. Most people celebrate on 13th because 14th is a holiday and while it poured rain in the morning, the rest of the day was hot and dry. For such a small town the fireworks were very good. We all took a dish and drinks and I made two different vegetarian dishes as one of our crowd is vegetarian. I'm in the mood to cook at the moment and having pulled out that foodie magazine, I'm thinking it might be fun to pick a couple of recipes from each magazine and try to replicate them, in order to expand my reptertoire, as it were. At the moment I'm all gung ho, but we'll see how long that lasts, I suppose! Still, you never know if you don't try, right?

Lazy!

Boy have I gotten lazy this past week! I put a lot of it down to the heat but something's gotta give as I don't feel I can/should sit on my sofa for much longer when there's so much that needs doing! I have wasted a lot of time these past few months going down Youtube rabbit holes but hopefully that's going to ease up because in all honesty there's only so many times you can watch the same stuff over and over again, isn't there. Mind you, talking of Youtube, the channel I mentioned not so long ago as a new-to-me channel that I was enjoying (Rewilding Jude) has recently been nominated in one of the "best newcomers" categories in the UK, so I hopped on over to the site and added my vote. He started his channel about nine months ago and has amassed almost 100,000 subscribers already and a few sponsors, so I'm glad to see things are positive for him after a rough few years and wish him and his channel well!

While I haven't done much walking lately due to the heat, I have started listening to Cheere Denise reading Margaret Trudeau's autobiography, Changing My Mind! I'm not very far into it but already you can see what a "wild child" she was, even from a very young age. I'm just at the point where she and Pierre are about to get married and while I understand many people had no time for either of them, her book, so far, is refreshingly blunt!

It was so hot the other day that I decided to turn my stand-alone AC unit on for a couple of hours in order to cool my bedroom down, but when I went into the bedroom I realized that something (most likely "mason wasps") had made a nest inside the unit as far as I could tell, and turning it on blasted shredded wasp appendages all over the floor, so I've had to take it to pieces and clean the crap out of it!!! How come nothing comes easy when it's almost 100°???

Then just the other day I was checking out my niece's prom photos on FB when I happened to glance over at my contacts in FB Messenger and spotted "Je m'appelle Katie" in amongst them. Huh? I have no idea who that might be so I clicked on the name and it took me to a suspicious looking page so I quickly went in and blocked "them"! Usually when this happens, if I click on the name I find out that "Katie" has 120 "friends" all based in Nigeria but seemingly not this time. Within about 10 minutes, however, there was another "unknown contact" showing up so I blocked that one too and logged off. So far they haven't come back but I guess that is how they take over your FB page and start sending desperate messages to family and friends about how you're trapped in Africa and just need a few $$$$ to get home safely! My niece and her friends looked lovely in their prom dresses but it's something new to me as we didn't have that kind of thing when I was at school. I remember walking out of school on my last day and going "thank God for that", while my brother dumped his satchel full of books in the River Cole and never looked back. Different times I guess!

Whenever I leave home I always take a water bottle with me, especially in this heat, and the other day when I got home I happened to notice a little hedgehog hiding under the honeysuckle bush by my garage door, so I emptied my water bottle into a plastic dish and left it out for him. Later that evening I heard a noise outside so I turned on my security cameras and there he has was having a good ol' swim in half an inch of water. Cute huh! I've no idea what other creatures are helping themselves but the water is pretty much gone by the next morning, although the birds who have nested in the roof beams seem to have cottoned on and I now get to sweep bird poop up every morning when I open up!

I also got fed up of my sloth mindset the other day and decided to make all the routine doctor's appointments that are shortly coming due. I had an eye exam on Wednesday (no change) and was very impressed with how efficient their whole set up was. Right next door is an optician's so I stopped in there with my new prescription and within 10 minutes had walked out having ordered two new pairs of glasses. Then when I got home I submitted the bills to my medical insurance provider and within about an hour I'd been reimbursed. Again, I can't knock them for efficiency!

On Saturday I went to the end-of-year kermesse (fair?) at Charlie's school where we'd signed up for their couscous dish to support the school's fundraiser. While I know couscous is the actual grain, in France if you order "couscous" you get a particular kind of north African dish which is really delicious. The one we got wasn't so great but then it was all for a good cause!

Couscous!

There was what I believe was a Moroccan wedding at the Mairie next door and when the bride and groom came out the women did the "youyou", which is "an expression of joy" - and very nice they looked too!

It was scorching hot so we decided to sit on the grass in the shade to eat. Luckily I'd thought to pack a few water pistols and while André and Charlie probably had the most fun, by the time I'd passed them out to the non-grownups, there were quite a few soaking wet kids and parents!

The next day we all decided to meet up at the swimming pool in Bonneville and while the car park was packed there was plenty of room outside under the trees for everyone. They had one of those attractions where a huge bucket slowly fills up with water and when it reaches tipping point, over it goes and everyone gets soaked. Charlie yelled at me to run, but when it went over he and Jordan were standing in exactly the wrong spot and they were the ones that got drenched! It was such a hot day, though, that I think everyone was glad to get drenched just to get some relief!

And finally, when I was in town yesterday I spotted a new-to-me place that apparently takes in ironing and organizes home cleaners. I never minded ironing even when we were a full house and if you walked into my place you wouldn't scream in horror at the state of it, but I must admit I'm very tempted to possibly lay out a couple of hundred euros to have a team come in and clean my place for five hours! At €38/hour that sounds like a deal to me - you know, something you might do a couple of times a year! Then again, maybe the heat is just making me lazy but the idea is brewing in my pea brain so we'll see if it takes off!