Still wading through treacle - but it's getting a little easier!

Sometimes I'm just so really, really grateful that I'm very organized because I hate to think what people do in situations similar to mine if they aren't. Just about everything that could go wrong in this house does seem to have gone wrong since Christmas and while it's exhausting, at least I'm managing to keep my chaos organized! The other weekend I just thought "sod it" and basically spent the entire weekend on the sofa reading. I don't know why I feel guilty about doing this - I mean, it's not as though I owe anyone an explanation is it - but it did me a world of good to just shut the door on "all that" for a couple of days!

Starting with the best news, Elynn came out of hospital after two nights as they couldn't find anything wrong with her intestines nor any allergy to baby formula. So it seems it was just something that was going around, which was likely confirmed by a friend at sewing club who told me that her young grandchildren had had the same thing too! Phew, that's a relief!

My electrician still has to come back one more time to fix my outdoor motion detector light, but that's only minor and if he lets me know when he's coming I can just leave the side gate open for him. He did thank me for the excellent review I left on the local trades' site because "now he will probably be able to reset people's x-boxes all over Haute Savoie"! Ha, I like his style! He also gave me the name of a young plumber he had worked with so he is coming over tomorrow to give me a quote to hopefully finally get that last bathroom done (fingers crossed on that one)! As for decorating the bedroom where the fire started, I'm thinking I will probably just try painting it myself at some point and if I do a real cock-up job, well then I'll think about getting someone in later to remedy my mistakes!

Before the electrician came over last time I wanted to get a new "thingy" (as I call it - would you call that a socket?) as I needed him to fit it in a downstairs light. So I ran down to the local DIY store and I always seem to end up speaking too an extremely nerdy-looking but helpful young man. As I didn't know what it was called in French I showed him this photo and he told me it was called a douille. I could also hear that he was making fun of my accent (although not unkindly) when he went on to explain to me that he would need more than just the photo, he would need the dimensions. So I said "oh that's easy, I'll need an E27 (thank you my electrician) and the look of shock on his face as he was just about to make fun of my accent again made all my "studying" worthwhile! One-nil to me I'd say at this point!

Is the white thing a "socket"?

And of course the keys I got cut for sewing club the other day don't work but sometimes I think life's just too short to stuff a mushroom, so sod it, we'll make do!

I've mentioned before that I follow a few walking/hiking groups on Facebook and any time I see what looks like a reasonable hike around here I post it to my own FB feed so I know I'll be able to find it again. I'm sure some of my family members are dead impressed by what would appear to be all the hikes I've conquered but I'll have to let them in on my secret at some point, I suppose. That being said, on the UK-based Walk 1,000 Miles group I saw a couple who I would say were in their mid-70s explaining how they'd started consistently walking an hour a day when covid hit in order not to go stir crazy and over time they'd added in greater distances and more challenging walks, so much so that this year they'd going to attempt the Camino de Santiago, a walk of about 30 days covering almost 500 miles! Crikey, puts my piddly little walks to shame, doesn't it! Mind you, someone on one of the local groups posted an open invitation to an apéritif in the mountains for anyone who could make it. Now that's something I could see me training for!

While I'm doing one of my usual routes I'm still listening to Traitor King and, as I've said before, it does get better. Heck they've got murder (mob and drugs related), money laundering, tax evasion, blatant infidelity and I'm still only on chapter 21. By this point many people are getting extremely fed up of Edward and Wallis and in particular their sponging off other people. One man commented that he had no idea what gave Wallis her hold over men (although "hold" she most certainly had) because in his opinion she was an unattractive, skeletal, flat-chested harridan who would make a "good medieval prototype for a playing card" (I'm paraphrasing, but when I pictured the queen of diamonds playing card I just burst out laughing)!

Wallis Simpson!

I've also started listening to Cheere Denise reading a book about Martha Stewart called Just Desserts, which could also prove to be very interesting. Martha is/was obviously very beautiful, very talented and very driven but I think it might not come as a great surprise to everyone to hear that she could be a pretty nasty piece of work and a prolific liar (according to the book) so I'll let you know what I think when I get round to it!

I heard just the other day that Argentina's President Xavier Milei has authorized the release of "the Hitler files" which, apparently, document the escape to Argentina of many top Nazis (including Hitler) after the war. While I knew many had indeed escaped I never really knew what to think about the rumour that it wasn't Hitler's body they found in the bunker in Berlin (apparently what was supposed to be Hitler's skull with the bullet wounds in it it was a female skull) and Hitler did seemingly live out the remainder of his life in Argentina after the war. Crikey, I wonder if that will pan out! And to add to the suspense, just yesterday Audible announced the release of Operation Paperclip, a book that I've been wanting to read for ages (one of many, obviously)! According to Wiki:

* * * * *

Operation Paperclip was a secret United States intelligence program in which more than 1,600 German scientists, engineers, and technicians were taken from former Nazi Germany to the US for government employment after the end of World War II in Europe, between 1945 and 1959; several were confirmed to be former members of the Nazi Party, including the SS or the SA.

* * * * *

In the UK, former Reform party MP, Rupert Lowe, launched a crowd-funding initiative to fund an independent investigation into the UK grooming gangs responsible for the grooming and rape of hundreds, if not thousands of young girls over the past several decades, because seemingly no-one in power wants to "go there" (I wonder why)! He was aiming for £500,000 and after about 36 hours he's already reached over £432,000. I donated of course, but well done Rupert, one of the few MPs who is willing to stand up in Parliament and ask the questions no-one seems to want to answer!

In France some bright spark has had the idea of setting up a kind of "savings plan" for citizens to invest in whereby the state can use that money to remilitarize! There is a minimum of five years in which your money will be blocked, they can't or won't indicate what the starting interest rate will be - oh and there's no guarantee you'll even get your initial investment back! As one of France's top economists said, "even Madoff wouldn't have tried that one on"!

As I'm sure you're also aware, Marine Le Pen seems to be going the same way as Romania's Calin Georgescu, Germany's AfD party, Geert Wilders in the Netherlands etc. About the best initial explanation of the situation I can find in English can be seen here by Neil McCoy Ward (the first 10 minutes). There's obviously much more detailed information on it in French but Neil does a decent job of explaining the basics. We'll see what happens, but to say things are volatile here at the moment would be an understatement!

And finally, Friday was Charlie's fourth birthday so since the weather wasn't supposed to be great we all went off the Aquarium in Lausanne, followed by raclette at Jordan and Jen's place. At one point there was a huge fish right in front of Elynn and Jordan was trying to draw her attention to it, but she was absolutely captivated by the man standing next to her. When he looked down at her she gave him the most beautiful smile and he burst out laughing when Jordan went "oh look Elynn, it's a human"! Then Charlie was sitting with a little girl looking at the komodo dragons when the little girl squealed and shouted "look mommy, he's got a Paw Patrol hat on"! Kids eh, there's no pleasing them sometimes is there!

The Aquarium, Lausanne

Paw Patrol trumps all!

And more of the same!

While last week was another crappy week I keep hoping that the more I plough on through, the easier things will get. It's got to, right? My electrician is coming by tomorrow to finish one final thing (28 days and counting) so I got his bills sorted out and went to make a final payment last week. At this point I owed him €6,421 but when I went to make the payment a notice popped up from my bank to say that I was limited to payments of maximum €3,000 per day. Not a problem, I'll just make the payments over the next couple of days!!! So on 5 March I went to send €3,000 but my bank blocked me at €2,000, so while it was frustrating I simply went back every 24 hours for three days to make another payment - only to find out that none of them were going through, despite there being sufficient funds in the account and my authorizing these payments via an app on my phone! So I contacted the bank to see what was going on and while one payment went through the others didn't, so they told me to try again. So I try again and yet again my payments aren't going through and I'm starting to pull my hair out! Anyway on Friday I went into town to get two new keys cut for sewing club and the place that does the key cutting had a sign on the door saying "cash only" (hmm, nice little number you've got going on there buddy), so I paid cash and then went to the bank to deposit a sewing club cheque back into my account. While I was there I thought I'd try to find out what was going on so booked an appointment on the spot and sat in the waiting room to wait for the young man to call me over. While I was there I noticed a horrendous smell of alcohol which was obviously coming from the old man the employee was dealing with at that moment, but when he straightened up I realized it was Stephan, who I knew from when Stan had his little bar in the village! While Stephan was filling out some forms, the employee called me over but I asked him to step outside and turned my back to Stephan, indicating that I didn't want him to see me. The last two times I've seen Stephan in town he's asked me for money (he has plenty, he obviously just pours it down his throat), but at least I was finally able to get the remaining amount transferred to my electrician, despite both of us holding our noses because the smell coming off of Stephan was horrendous. I guess he's fallen off the wagon again then!

On Tuesday a technician from my phone carrier (SFR) showed up to get me hooked up with fibre but once he opened up the concrete trap near my neighbour's garden he was a cussin' and a swearin' like nobody's business. Whoever had worked on the phone lines before had obviously "done a terrible job" and how was he supposed to get this sorted. He had a strange gait whereby his right leg kinda swung out a bit and the madder he got the more that leg swung and I thought if he keeps going like this he's going to end up spinning himself into the ground like some kind of donar kebab! What I hadn't realized was that he had actually dropped the concrete trap into the hole and broken more wires than he fixed so now all three of our houses were cut off from the internet. Thankfully my neighbour Isabelle was there because he was trying to tell her to get somebody in to fix it but she stood her ground and said no, everything was working until you showed up, now it's up to you to fix it (spin, spin, cuss, cuss)! Eventually I got my mobile and wifi back up and running but my landline and therefore my security cameras are still not working so they have to come back again. Piss up and brewery really springs to mind with this one! And that was when my favourite neighbour came round to say that she didn't have wifi anywhere in the house either (she's also with SFR), so after much huffing and puffing I managed to get her hooked up to my own wifi, which is fine, but obviously she needs to have her own network restored! I can't believe next week will be a year since her husband died and it's amazing how much she has progressed from the beaten down timid little woman to a woman who, while not exactly ready to take on Everest, is now smiling again and I've even gotten putting her appointments into her telephone calendar "all on her own like a big girl" (her words, not mine)!

The saga with my solar panels is still ongoing, with the young woman I spoke to last time telling me that "of course your panels are hooked up to the grid" and me pointing out to her that "of course I've never received any of this paperwork because you've got my email address wrong" (honey, I may speak with an accent but I don't think with one)!!! Anyway, on Friday I called again and a rather sweet older gent explained to me that he was just the accountant but he took my number and a very nice older lady called back so I got to explain my situation to her from start to finish. And she agreed with me that my panels couldn't possibly be hooked up because I didn't have a "BTA number" from EDF. Thank god someone is finally talking to me like I'm not stupid! She gave me enough information that I was able to get in touch with EDF to get the aforementioned BTA number and has promised to get back to me tomorrow. We'll see if she does but somehow I think she will. Turns out she's the wife of the company owner and I just wish she could give her snotty employee lessons on how not to talk to people!

In other news, I was checking my lottery numbers the other week and much to my surprise I found I'd won €351!!! Oh I realize over the years I've given them much more than that but it was a nice surprise anyway, and since Jordan had the week off to take care of the kids, I met him at the supermarket and paid for their groceries (plus Charlie got a nice lego set)! 

I spoke to my sister at the weekend and she was telling me that her granddaughter was taking her O'level cookery exam on Tuesday so they'd been practicing at home. I forget what she was making for a starter but the main course was lasagne (where she had to make the lasagna sheets herself) and tiramisu for dessert! I hadn't realized that in some schools at least they've gone back to home economics lessons, and I'm delighted to hear it (and I'm sure she'll pass)!

Talking of pasta, I'd made stuffed cannelloni for Wednesday when I was to take care of Charlie in the afternoon, but Jordan sent me a message on the Tuesday evening to say that Elynn had been projectile vomiting and the emergency number Jen called told them to take her straight to the hospital as she was so little. She didn't seem to be in any pain, and didn't have diarrhoea, just the vomiting, but as they were worried it might be something to do with her intestine they kept her in overnight (Jen stayed with her of course). It was a good job I went over anyway because I was able to keep Charlie for the next 10 hours while Jordan went back to the hospital with stuff for Jen and they got him to try to give her a bottle of baby formula to see if she was allergic to that. They'd only just started trying to wean her off breast milk so potentially it could have been that, but they kept her in another night and they will get the results of her blood tests tomorrow hopefully, and can take it from there! They've all really been through the wringer lately, so I'm sure they'll be glad to know one way or the other where they go from here!

And finally, yoga started back up again on Monday and was I ever glad to be back there. We did one pose which I reckon is new to me, although the teacher says we've done it before. It's called the pigeon pose and when I commented afterwards what a great exercise that was, she said she wasn't surprised as it really works the sciatic nerve! Rather than looking like an elegant pigeon I'm pretty sure I looked like a bloated seagull hovering over a bag of chips, but ya takes the wins where ya can, right?

The pigeon pose!

Finally (hopefully?) coming up for air!

You know how sod's law dictates that when one thing goes wrong, everything else comes slamming at you like a bloody tsunami? Well the last couple of months have felt like that for me but finally/hopefully things are starting to look up. I've been absolutely exhausted for so long but I had promised to look after Charlie (school holidays) on Wednesday so duly got up at 6 a.m. to get over there by eight in order for Jen to go to work. He's a great little kid but man he wears me out. In his defence, if I had to look after him every day I'd probably have a better routine but at the moment he seems to think I'm his best friend in all the world. Mind you, if I hear just once more how his other granny doesn't colour outside the lines I may have to restrain myself!!!! I took him out to the park and into the woods for almost three hours (the weather's glorious here) in the hopes it would wear him out - which it did - but you can probably guess how I was feeling by the time I got him back home and down for a nap. Mind you, as I say, I can really only blame myself for being so tired, because as his mom walked through the door he yelled "Nanny, motorbikes" so we both dashed to our chairs (placed one in front of the other) and put our tupperware bowls on our heads (crash helmets - hygienic, right) and set off on our "motos" going vroom vroom! I swear mom thinks I'm insane, but at least Jordan is used to it!

Elynn was just getting over a nasty cough (thank you daycare) and I reckon she passed it on to me because I have been coughing enough to keep waking me up ever since. So tonight I decided I had to go through my medicine cabinet to fish out the oregano oil that worked so well last time and when I finally found it I put two drops into a very small amount of water (it's disgusting), must have coughed at the same time and promptly threw up (tmi, I know). But for the last four hours I haven't coughed once so I'm ever more convinced! Mind you, seeing the complete disaster zone that passes for a medicine cabinet, I realized right now would be a good time to start sorting it out, so if anyone needed a couple of paracetamol back in 2017, you should have just given me a call!

Friday was day 27 of the electrician being here (so over five weeks so far) but hopefully just one more day will be the end of it. However nice he is, I'm sure we will both be glad to see the back of each other! He asked what was going on with the Chuckle Brothers (the three Bangladeshi brothers - electrician/plumber/painter and decorator, where I had refused the electrican's quote but accepted the other two) and I told him nothing as I'd not seen hide nor hair of them since they first came over in January. So he told me to get down to the bank and block the deposit cheque (€965) as after 30 days their quote was no longer valid and it would be better to block it rather than try to get the money back. So then he asks what's going on with my solar panels (nothing, seemingly) and while I had noticed my bills hadn't gone down at all he told me to get right onto the installers and ask what the hell was going on. The woman told me that everything absolutely was up and running and sent me three different legal documents to show that they absolutely had sent the paperwork to me to get me hooked up to the grid. The only problem was that they'd gotten both my telephone number and my email address wrong, so it's no wonder I'd never received the paperwork (which I wasn't aware was coming and that I needed to sign). I sent her a copy of these mistakes so we'll see how that plays out next week! So then he points out how crap my wifi is (I know) and had me call my provider there and then to find out what was going on, given how much I was paying. The end result is my provider is coming to instal fibre on Tuesday, I've gotten a mobile wifi for €5 and both my landline and my mobile fees have gone down. It's not that I didn't know these things needed taken care of (except for the solar panels) but sometimes it all just feels overwhelming. So maybe I will miss this young man after all!

Edited to add: and of course I totally forgot about my security cameras. My service provider sent me a parcel containing batteries and asking me to call them in order for them to help me change the batteries in my internal camera. I thought "how difficult could that be?" (assuming you don't mind getting up a stepladder) and it was indeed easy. But then they kept sending me messages asking me to call them - which of course I ignored repeatedly because I'd changed the batteries. Eventually, as they wouldn't give up, I called back rather bad-temperedly but what they wanted to do was do a test run to make sure the cameras were functioning correctly (my bad)! So they had me move out of sight, activate the internal alarm, and then move into the line of the camera to set the alarm off so they could take a picture and tell me what I was wearing. Of course the alarm was so loud that my neighbour came running round, I ran to the door and all the camera guy was either a photo of my right foot or my backside à la Mr. Bean as I ran out of shot!!!! In the end it was okay as I just asked him what was hanging over my banister (he correctly answered a white sweater) so another thing sorted. Of course it was no big deal but all these things came hammering at me like a battering ram and to say I wasn't necessarily "gracious" (at least in my own mind) would be an understatement!

In other news, last Saturday was our latest board game evening and I was asking the host, Philippe, how his mom was coping since his 62 year old sister had died suddenly just before Christmas. It turns out his mom had died about 10 days later! I felt bad as I obviously had no idea, but he reckons his mom just gave up after his sister died. Even so, that's a hard blow for anyone to bear in such a short space of time!

The lady from sewing club who had me buy stuff from Amazon for her sent me a message today asking if I could get something else for her urgently as it was needed for a grandchild's birthday on Friday!!! I ignored her for a while but in the end I looked it up and the smaller version that she wanted was not available, and the bigger one wouldn't ship until 20th March, so I suggested she try one of the other sites where she'd found the photo. And can you believe it - she asked me if I had accounts with these other sites!!! I told her no, I only felt comfortable putting my credit card information on Amazon as I trust them and said she might want to ask one of her own children! Can you believe the nerve of some people!

What with not sleeping and then being constantly on the go, I really have been tired these past few weeks, so yesterday I decided I had to get myself down to Passy for a walk and then again off out into the woods today to try to blow these cobwebs away. While I was walking I picked back up listening to Traitor King and I have to admit that by the time she gets to Chapter 8 it starts to get much more interesting, so yeah, if you have the patience to get through the first few chapters it's another book I would recommend. And again, Edward comes over as a weak, pompous and very entitled alpha wimp who, Churchill knew, was flapping his jaws to the Nazis, either via Wallis and one of her many lovers (von Ribbentrop, who was Nazi Germany's Foreign Affairs Minister) or just generally around any dinner table where, given the time, would have been comprised 50% of foreign spies!

And finally, I did end up taking the kids' friend, Julien, up to Avoriaz for his dog-sledding outing. He was sooooo nervous as (according to him) he's always been a wimp. He went yadda, yadda, yadda the entire 60 km drive up to Avoriaz until in the end I just looked at him and said "you do realize I'm not listening to a word you're saying don't you"? He bought me lunch and I stood outside to watch them getting the dogs ready and filmed him as he set off (he did pretty darn well "for a wimp"). And he loved it so I'm so glad I made the effort!

Avoriaz

The intrepid Julien!

So hopefully things are starting to calm down a little here. This weekend was the start of the Venetian carnaval in Annecy but as I knew you wouldn't be able to get anywhere near Annecy right now, I'll just have to wait until they come back to La Roche again!

Aaarrgghh!

Bugger, bugger, bugger! Well now I've got that out of my system ... what a crappy couple of days I've had! And breath! I didn't end up going snow-shoeing with my neighbour the other day as she called to say she wasn't well (she suffers from migraines) so I ended up sitting on my backside doing bugger all! Shame on me though because getting out there shouldn't depend on having someone else to go with!

My electrician came again the other day (day 18 at this point) and I just left him to it as I had things to do. But bugger it wouldn't you know it when I came back he told me he had miscalculated one of my plug sockets and had not only gotten an electric shock when he plugged in my vacuum cleaner but had buggered up the vacuum also! At this point I just shook my head because heck, if I can't leave him alone for 15 minutes....!!! Actually he was okay but realized afterwards that that particular plug socket hadn't been secured yet! So now I've gotten an almost frazzled electrician and a definitely buggered up vacuum cleaner! (I have one on every floor so as not to have to lug the bloody things up and down stairs)! Anyway, he was profusely apologetic but as it was a cheapo I told him to forget it. So then I get on to looking for a replacement and found one at a local French store but he told me to wait a few minutes and check out the same vacuum cleaner on Amazon and lo and behold, the price dropped from €138 to €75 - the result of cookies, apparently! I was told to expect a delivery shortly but at the same time I was expecting a new French cheque book so I was a bit confused when the mail lady delivered a humongous parcel when I was only expecting my cheque book! Anyway, the electrical work is still ongoing but dare I hope that I can see a light at the end of the tunnel and it isn't a train coming the other way!

Then on Tuesday I ran down to drop stuff off at the recycling centre and when I went to drive off my bloody car wouldn't start! Zip, nada, zilch! One of the men working there very kindly came over and said he thought it might be my key fob and since the battery I had in my glove compartment wasn't the right size, he took the battery out of his own key fob to see if that worked. And that was when I realized I'd handed him the key fob that opens the door to the sewing clubroom!!! Oh man, did I ever feel stupid - but he was very patient with me and switched the battery into the car fob - but still it wouldn't work, so I had no choice but to call Thiery at the Ford garage! I'm guessing it wasn't a good time for him as they were flat out, but he came out and tried to work his magic on my car but still couldn't get it going. In the end he gave me their loaner car for me to drive back home to get my spare key but still we couldn't get the car going - even after jumping it! At this point I'm thinking "oh sod it" because my window was down and the car was seemingly going nowhere - well that was until Thiery tried one more thing - tightening up the bolts on the battery and bingo, it bloomin' well started. I could have (and did) kissed him I was so relieved but when I got outside the recycling centre I couldn't find my phone, so dashed back off to Ford to see if I had left it in the loaner car. Except said loaner car had just disappeared, having been lent to another client. Again, bugger it! I ended up being without my phone for 48 hours (until the client came back with the loaner car) and boy did it bring home to me just how dependent I (we?) am on the bloody thing. The biggest worry for me was that without the app on my phone I had no access to my Swiss salary account, and indeed my bank account in the UK, although that was less serious! In France I was still good, but not being able to access my pension in my Swiss account could have been really problematic. Then I realized I couldn't access my security cameras, and of course all my appointments were in my phone calendar - although here I was relieved because I also write everything in my paper calendar too. I mean the list just goes on and on of what could have been lost with that phone, although again, I do keep a separate paper list of all my important passwords! As I said to my neighbour, imagine breaking down somewhere and having no phone to call someone. Then imagine someone lends you a phone but can you remember any of your contacts' phone numbers anyway? The only number I could remember was my friend's landline because it's very similar to my own, but seriously, what a nightmare. I was so, so glad to eventually get it back that I dropped off a good bottle of red wine to the guy at the recycling centre and two for Thiery at Ford!!! And then when I got home, I tried to shut the door to the spare bedroom, and the bloody door handle came off in my hand!!!! Sod's law of course, but at that point I just thought "oh to hell with it, I'll sort that tomorrow"! And I did!

I'm still limping along listening to Traitor King but it's not doing it for me so much as I find Edward to be so self-centred and spoilt - but then to be fair, if you've been fawned over your entire life and told how wonderful you are simply because of the accident of your birth, well I suppose it's understandable really that he should have been such a navel-gazer! I want to finish it though because I'm really interested in what the historical consequences could have been if things had turned out differently! I remember reading one time that the powers that be thought they could have accommodated his marriage to Wallis Simpson despite her being a twice-divorced woman, but they were extremely worried about both their sympathies for Nazi Germany, and that apparently is where they had to put their foot down! Seemingly Edward believed that when Hitler won the war, he would be re-installed as the King, with Wallis by his side as Queen. Thankfully fate had other ideas!

Wallis and Edward meeting Hitler!

Yesterday I looked after Charlie as he doesn't have school on Wednesdays. He was as good as gold so after his nap we went to the park where he met three little girls and chased them around pretending to be a lion!!!! Thing is, I reckon he's having a growth spurt so he's growing taller but getting skinnier and the poor devil had to run around being a scary lion while holding his trousers up as they kept falling off his backside! After that we went for a walk and when I saw a bridge over a little stream I showed him how to play Pooh sticks - where you throw a stick over one side of the bridge and then dash over to the other side to see whose stick comes out first! He loved it - such a silly game but we ended up staying there for about 30 minutes. Mind you, I'm sure a couple of engineers further downstream were probably cussing out "those damn beavers" for blocking the stream again. Never mind - but thank you Winnie the Pooh all the same!

Playing Pooh sticks!

And finally last night Jen called to ask if I was doing anything tomorrow (well we're having our board game evening, that's all). She told me that Julien (her friend that comes to our board game evenings) had been given a birthday gift certificate for a sleigh ride up at Avoriaz tomorrow but his car was playing up and everyone else was either busy or not around to take him up there and what did I think? Now I hate driving on the snow but in the end thought "what the hell", so tomorrow I'm driving him up to Avoriaz for his birthday present and I'll get to wander around for a couple of hours while he's gone. Let's hope the good weather holds. Fingers crossed!

A man of many talents!

Well my electricity saga is ongoing - 16 days and counting to get the top two floors of my house re-wired etc. and then he will start on the ground floor next week. I'm really hoping it will all get done by next Friday, but if not, oh well. We can't be far off now! That being said, I was so happy the weather was good today that I took myself off for a walk through the local woods just to get some fresh air. It's supposed to be nice again tomorrow too so I was trying to decide where I should go - further afield - in order to be able to deal with the cabin fever next week! But then my neighbour sent me a message asking if I wanted to go out walking with her tomorrow so I jumped at the chance. She's the one who has lived here about 20 years but since her husband isn't interested in going out exploring she really has little idea what lovely walks there are out there. Just in case we're going to take our snow shoes with us - you know the ones we were desperate to get hold of during lockdown and which we've never used yet!!! We'll see how it goes tomorrow but I actually don't think we'll need them at this point! On my walk today I noticed yet again the house with what looks like loads of antennae all over the place. Probably five on the roof and a massive satellite dish (maybe five feet in diameter) in the front garden! I've often wondered what's up with all that equipment and assuming he's probably not a very indiscreet spy, I reckon E.T. will definitely be able to phone home from his place if he ever comes back to earth somewhere near here!

The other week after yoga class one of the ladies asked me if I would be interested in taking a trip to the Périgord region (south-western France) with their old fogies group in September. I don't have anything planned, what with all the expense of getting this place put right, but in the end I decided to go for it. I know this lady a little as she was on the trip to Corsica with us so I thought "what the hell" and headed off to St. Pierre on Tuesday to sign up. The lady president of the St. Pierre club asked me if I was interested in playing cards with them (there were about 80 people there playing when I showed up), but as we were chatting two older gentlemen came over to her bitching, apparently, that so-and-so wouldn't switch tables and "you know we're all supposed to move around after every game"! Ehhhh, no thanks, I'll pass. I had signed up a couple of years ago for card club in the village where my sewing club is but gave up in the end because it was around this time that Jordan and Jen needed baby-sitting help with Charlie so I dropped out. At our last annual meeting (where each club's financial statements are handed in) I learned that there was a lot of bickering going on in this card club too so the then lady president had resigned and someone else had taken over! Maybe card games bring out the worst in people, I don't know, but the average age seemed to be around 105 so I suppose if they're bitching at least it means they're still breathing! In any case, we'll see what this trip to the Périgord is like and if it's any good I might go on some of the various day trips with them too if they appeal!

Now that I've finished listening to the Ethel Kennedy book, I've switched over to listening to Cheere Denise reading the Andrew Lowney book, Traitor King, about Edward and Mrs. Simpson. It's obviously very very different to the Kennedy book but it could well prove interesting. What is amazing, however, are the similarities between them and Harry and Meghan - they really do seem to have been Harry and Meghan Mark I! Oh I don't mean in the sense that they both married very domineering American divorcées - that's the least of it - but in the apparent similarities between the two men's personalities and their relationships with their wives! Edward was raised never having to think for himself for even one minute. Every day someone decided what he would wear, what he would say, where he would go and so on, and he seems to have been a totally self-absorbed, selfish, entitled and mean man. After his abdication but before he and Wallis could get married (I'm guessing they were waiting for her divorce to come through) he was invited to stay with Kitty Rothschild and her husband in one of their homes. His days seemed to have been spent navel-gazing or shopping - and then having his bills forwarded to Kitty for them to pay!!!!! What is it with these fabulously wealthy people thinking other people are just dying to pay their way for them? On the day Kitty finally left because she'd had enough of him, he couldn't even be bothered to get out of bed to thank her and say goodbye!!! Good grief! What's even weirder is that Wallis Simpson didn't actually want to marry him. Oh he was good enough to have as one of her dalliances - another notch on the bedpost so to speak - but she apparently found him so incredibly boring and "soppy" she really, really did not want to marry him. The book states that the day after the wedding he smiled at her and said "so what do we do now?" and she later confided to Gore Vidal that it was at that moment she knew she was going to have take over where palace staff had left off and become his new mommy!!! Yikes! It's harder going than the Kennedy book but so far (I'm on chapter six) the parallels between them and H and M are amazing! The author actually chipped in in the comment section of chapter two to say that he very much appreciated the way Cheere Denise was presenting his book, so I'm looking forward to listening to the rest of it!

My friend came over the other day to ask if I wanted some apples as she'd over-ordered on her grocery delivery. She'd wanted four apples and ended up with 4 kg of apples (about 20 apples)! She told me that she hadn't been well as she'd strained a ligament in her left shoulder - she thinks lugging bags of firewood around - and ended up at the ER as she was in such pain. They decided to send her for a scan, but by the time the scan appointment came around the pain had greatly diminished so she cancelled it - only to end up in the same situation the following day but this time in her right shoulder. I told her for god's sake call me if she needs me to drive her somewhere but being stubborn (aren't we all) she'd managed on her own. Then I spotted my favourite neighbour trying to hump a 20 kg gas bottle (about 45 lbs) out of her car and into her kitchen, so I went running round to carry it with her before she did herself an injury too. We don't have mains gas here so use gas bottles if we want a gas hob - but changing those bottles is no joke as they are extremely heavy. Again I understand why people don't like to ask for help but ....! And bugger me but didn't my own gas bottle run out the next day, but at least I only have to lug it into the garage from the car so it's easier for me! I told them we should get a bigger place and have some kind of Golden Girls set up! It might not be such a bad idea, come to think of it!

I mentioned before that I've ordered so many different kinds of lightbulbs off Amazon these past couple of weeks that as he was leaving the other night my electrician picked up one of the duds that I was going to take to the recycling centre and asked me what reference this particular bulb was. I invented a reference off the top of my head and he started laughing. So he tried again, and again I got it wrong, and it ended with him patiently explaining to me that any bulb that started with reference letter E was a screw in bulb and the other numbers referred to the different dimensions. He told me he'd test me on it again next time, so as he was on his way out the door I asked him to name the six official languages of the United Nations without looking them up. So he closes the door and comes back in and of course he couldn't do it! As of right now we're one all!

Then yesterday after he'd spent a good 30 minutes on his hands and knees pulling cable through a very low crawl space I told him to give it a break and offered him a cup of coffee. As we were sitting there he commented on my X-box but I said I couldn't use it because last time I turned it on it needed to update settings and I couldn't figure it out! So he told me it was pretty easy and he would do it for me. After about 10 minutes he'd got it up and running and as I told him the only thing I ever played was the tennis he had me standing in front of the camera so that it could adjust itself, then told me to put my right arm up (I'm going to serve you see) and throw the "ball" up in the air with my left arm. While we're doing this I didn't hear my neighbour come round and she was half way up the stairs listening to us roaring laughing and must have wondered what on earth I was paying my electrician to do all day! It genuinely was just a 10 minute thing while he took a break, but I'm sure she now thinks I have money to burn paying an electrician by the hour to play X-box with me! Oh just think of the gossip!

It's been a hard day's night (and day and night and day and night and ...)!

Once again I've been offline for a while and am now trying to catch up with my blog reading after an exhausting week or so, but more on that later. I see that Sky News UK is officially finished - well not so much finished, but their viewing figures were dropping so badly that I think one thought was to make it now "pay to view" (if you'll forgive the expression)! I wonder which bright spark had that idea, I mean, if you can no longer entice viewers for free because of your biased "reporting" what makes you think people are now going to pay to watch your biased reporting??? Seems they're all going for each other's throats at the moment and while I think it's a shame because at one time they were a good news channel, given what they devolved into, I won't miss them at all!

In other news I see quite a few of the UK's large supermarkets are now going to be doing away with most, if not all, of their self-service cash registers due to the large amount of theft. Again, good news if it helps keep actual humans in work!

I finally finished listening to Cheere Denise' abridged readings of the book, The Other Mrs. Kennedy, and oh my goodness was that book ever a surprise! I was very young at the height of the "Camelot" era and always took Ethel to be the mousey little side-kick to the supposedly very glamorous Jackie (though I never saw it myself) but what a wild ride that book was! I tend to agree with Cheere Denise in that she thought Ethel had some kind of mental illness - and a breakdown would certainly have been understandable after Bobby's death - but she seemed to have been batshit crazy waaaayyyy before that! Her own mother banged out seven (I think) kids and then more or less dumped them on any paid help she could find in order to go off travelling with her newly-wealthy husband and spend his money. It seems to me that Ethel - never having had a better role model - did exactly the same! Oh she was bound and determined that she was going to have more children than Rose Kennedy (hence the 11 kids) but from the way the story is told, she had no particular interest in raising them after they were born. The house was total chaos, the kids were pretty much feral and they had numerous pets (including a pig) that were kept indoors and crapped all over the place. Eventually they had to start advertising for hired help anonymously because if they put the Kennedy name in there nobody would apply. One chef lasted just 12 hours, she punched and slapped the staff and had the most weird "sense of humour" where she would push her guests fully-clothed into the swimming pool or pour a glass of red wine over Andy Williams' head because it was "funny". She even rode her horse into Teddy Kennedy's brand new house, absolutely ruining the floor, and roared laughing at how hysterical it was - Teddy didn't agree! She seemed to have an intense dislike of Bobby Jr. and David in particular and physically chased them out of the house to fend for themselves as teenagers. David eventually died of a drug overdose and in a magazine interview (can't remember which one now) he described their family life as looking all picture perfect from the outside but chaos and bedlam on the inside, keeping his worst vitriol for his mother, Ethel. When she died Bobby Jr.'s "tribute" was far more restrained and not vitriolic, but if one of my kids ever delivered a eulogy like that about me, I think I'd be glad I was dead in order not to have to hear it! Honestly I think if you tried to sell her life to make as a film you would probably get turned down because it would just be seen as too ridiculous. It would appear, however, that some people actually do live lives that are beyond belief!

Aaaannnnd on to the main reason for my absence - welll the electrician has been here for about 12 days so far and thinks he might be able to get it all finished by the end of next week - although I'm not so sure. Every time I hear him say oh bon dieu I realize he's discovered yet another nightmare. The original fire was caused by the previous owner's handiwork in not putting an earthed plug socket in the top bedroom. Then we had an internal balcony knocked out and a false ceiling with spotlights installed. Turns out these light bulbs were on transformers, which were overheating gradually, and nestled into the insulation! That crap could have gone up at any time - we were just lucky it didn't. He was telling me that as an electrician you try to keep all your wiring in any particular room in one central place (apologies to any electricians out there but I can't remember what he called it), but the wiring in my house is all over the place so he's had to have his camera up in the ceiling of every room trying to locate where each block of wiring starts. Then he told me that all of my light bulbs were way too powerful - they were around 40W when they should be LED lights up to a maximum of 5W so Amazon have been having a field day with my credit card as I've been ordering lightbulbs galore for the past week. It should make a significant difference to my electric bill by the time I get them all changed but I now feel like they can probably also see my house from outer space - along with the Great Wall of China!

I was expecting a delivery on Friday and then received a text message from the driver to say that I had missed my delivery spot and to follow this link to either arrange another delivery to my home for €3 or pick up at a drop off point for €2 the next day. So I followed the link on my phone but I can't be doing with all that diddy text so typed the link into my computer - and it didn't seem to exist. And then I took another look at the order number and something made me go back into my Amazon account to check it and lo and behold it had nothing to do with my genuine order. I'm so so glad I didn't get any further on my phone because right that very moment the real Amazon driver rang my doorbell and there was my parcel!!!

This electrician is a really nice young man and usually if I'm cooking something I always offer workmen to eat with me, but with my electric being all over the place I wasn't exactly cooking up a storm so every day I ran into town and picked up sandwiches and pastries for both of us. He told me no-one had ever done that for him before, so I just laughed and told him I should introduce him to my Kosovan tiler as he'd soon put him straight. Then on Friday he showed up a bit late but walked in the door with croissants for both of us for breakfast and sandwiches and pastries for lunch! How nice is that!!!! He is up and down the stairs like a bride's nightie and as a result I have to admit he has the most gorgeous bum! Huh, and I thought all of that was dead in me but apparently not, on occasion!!!! He works extremely hard and while I'll eventually be glad to see the back of him, I wouldn't hesitate to recommend him to anyone that asks!

On Friday Charlie had his first "skiing lesson" (think walking on skis) which he absolutely adored but he sure was knocked out on the way home. I'm delighted because I loved sports as a kid and starting skiing at three is right up my alley!

And finally, I was so glad to have the weekend to myself before the "home improvements" start up again on Monday that I decided to get out to Passy for a walk at the lake. It was glorious as always and I was just sitting in my car having a cup of tea and enjoying the peace and calm, when all of a sudden some eejit with a ghettoblaster came roaring up on his bike like a displaced Rasta. Two older men threw their hands up in the air as he cycled past and then all of a sudden he stopped right in front of me, got off his bike and went striding up to them! I thought oh bloody hell what do I do here - do I film it if there's an altercation or get in the middle of it (like he'd be afraid of me, right), when he ran over to the men, kissed them on both cheeks and shook their hands! Phew thank God for that as I don't think my Bruce Lee impersonation would have impressed anyone!

So it's onwards and upwards again from tomorrow and I hope the electrics get finished by the end of next week. What with the electrician, the decorator, the new plumber (to finish the bathroom that the other guy didn't finish) and the tiler, I'm looking at a pretty steep hit to my bank account. I had the money but I don't think there'll be any long haul travel for me for a while!

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!