The bogey man!

Yesterday morning I went to my early morning yoga class and as always it was great! For the second week in a row she worked mainly on our arms and shoulders and I can still feel the effects of it today. Aching muscles but very positive! The gent who came for a "try-out" a few weeks ago actually came back too! I really didn't think he would as it can't be easy being the only man amongst a group of women, but nope, he came back after a couple of weeks' absence for a trip to Thailand. On the way out I asked him how he found it and he said "initially I was pretty skeptical as I'm usually full speed ahead, but it has really been a pleasant surprise"! I figured since he was pretty sporty he wouldn't be able to take the slower pace of yoga but like he said, it is working different muscles and the relaxed feeling he gets afterwards is just great! Nice huh!

Then when I got home I spent maybe an hour shifting more stuff out of the downstairs rooms, either upstairs or down into my basement, so downstairs is nearly empty now in anticipation of the arrival of the workmen who are coming to start prepping for my new floor on Friday. Well, first thing on Friday they will be shifting the big stuff I can't move on my own into my garage before prepping the floors in order to start work on Monday. I'm pretty sure all my remaining stuff will fit in the garage, but if not I may have to put a couple of things under my external balcony, cover them over and pray for reasonable weather! Then my neighbour took my lawnmower and bike down to his shed so we're almost hot to trot. A couple of weeks ago I had bought the paint to paint my kitchen before the new floor was laid but that ended up being a non-starter. I just haven't got round to it which, if I'm honest, is pretty ridiculous as there really isn't that much to paint. Actually, I'm in awe of people who decorate "this room this weekend and that room next weekend", when I can't even get my arse into gear for one room. But I know that's how I am. It will get done eventually but all on my schedule. It's almost like I need nine months and a bunch of Lamaze classes in order to get even the smallest DIY project started!!

Then last night I went to sewing club. Since I had the two additional sewing machines I had bought for club in my car I got there pretty early so I could make two trips up to our club room with all the gear. As I was unloading my stuff I heard footsteps running towards me and turned round to be confronted by a heavy set guy, about 40 years old, asking if I would drive him in to la Roche!!!!! He told me he was homeless, although he was nicely dressed and looked clean enough (not that that means anything) and "would I take two minutes to run him back in to la Roche"? When I said no, I have to be opening up the rooms for our club he started to become pretty insistent. "It would only take you two minutes, and you could open up the club room later"!!! So I told him it would only take 10 minutes for him to walk in to la Roche, or two minutes to walk to the main road where he stood a better chance of being picked up, to which he replied that he had a bad leg, but I said it didn't look too bad to me, given how he had run at me when I parked my car! But he kept on and on and when I continued to say no he then switched and asked for money. I again said no, and to leave me alone as I had to open up the club rooms. So then he grabbed my sewing machine and said "let me help you", at which point I balled him out, said to put my stuff the f**k down as the damn sewing machine was probably worth more than my car! At that point I knew I wasn't going to be opening up an unoccupied three storey building with psycho here trailing me so I decided to stand outside to wait for more people to show up. Keep in mind I was alone, it was pitch black and only just above freezing!! But I thought, "nope buddy, I'm not going anywhere with you on my tail and if you think you can freeze me out you haven't got the measure of me. I actually like the cold"! So I stood there for 20 minutes with him harassing me constantly for money or a ride back in to town. He eventually went over to the club building and tried the doors (which of course were still locked) and then pretended to leave but I saw him hide behind a wall right next to the front door. So then he came back and asked me to open up just for him to get warm but I told him the Mairie would take my keys off me if I let him in and I wasn't about to let him in anyway with a bunch of elderly ladies arriving shortly for club! Now normally on Monday nights there is also a choir that practices in the same building but for some reason it didn't look like it was on last night so I ended up on my own with the jerk!

After a while two younger guys pulled up in a car. I would say they were about 35 and they seemed to be looking something up on their phones. Eventually he went over to them and started asking them to run him in to town or to give him money and they both refused. So I'm thinking "here I'm saying to myself don't be mean and take him in to town and two young men are refusing this guy"!! I must have been mad to even entertain it!  Eventually Patricia, our teacher, showed up and I was able to drag her back to my car to pick up the other sewing machines and explain to her about creepy guy. So of course he came over and started in on her and she just kept telling him no. Once he realized he was getting nowhere with us he then went over to another, older lady who was just parking her car and started haranguing her. I told Patricia we couldn't leave her on her own to deal with him so we held back until she got to where she needed to go. Once we got inside Patricia said that just wasn't on so decided she would call the gendarmerie. Within about 10 minutes they had sent a patrol down and I think they pulled him over and started questioning him, judging by what some of the later arrivals were saying, but I'm not sure. In the meantime, we kept the front doors locked as he would definitely have come in (and how would we have gotten him out later?) and Patricia opened the doors up as each of the ladies arrived! Now I was a bit shaken at first being out there for 20 minutes with an aggressive guy. I told him he would be better off on the main road (which was literally a two minute walk away) and in any case no woman would give him a ride - all the more so since he smelled quite strongly of alcohol! But afterwards I just got pissed off. And that was quite reassuring (to me at least). I just felt if need be I would take a swing at him - although he was obviously younger and bigger than me - but it was reassuring to know that I wasn't afraid of getting hurt. And that, I guess, is a sad reflection on being married to a violent man. In the end I wasn't afraid of the violence - in fact, when he was "slugging away at me" I didn't feel the pain, to be honest. Oh sure, I felt it the next day but in the moment I wasn't afraid. And that's how I felt last night. Bring it on buddy if you must! Thankfully it didn't come to that but geez, all I wanted to do was get some sewing done!!!!

And talking of sewing, I tried quilting my baby quilt by machine. Hated it so I unpicked it. Re-did it by hand, and it was still bunching so I unpicked it again! So in the end I spent 20 minutes being harassed by an asshole and two hours getting nowhere with my quilt. Next week, when it's quieter, I'll probably take a trip down to Cluses to see my patchwork teacher so see what she suggests in order to just get the darn thing finished!

And then when I got home, I read for a bit on the sofa before getting in to bed to read for a while longer. And bloody hell, at 12.20 a.m. my damn phone rang with an incoming call from Morocco! Now I've been getting these calls for a while - two rings and then they hang up so I'd guess it's just a random computer dial-up. And as routinely as they come in I just as routinely block them but you obviously can't outrun these computer dial ups! I wasn't as mad as I probably should have been because I was still up reading, but about 10 minutes later I put the light out and went to sleep, only to be woken up at 1 a.m. by the same bloody thing! Now this time I was furious and eventually turned my phone off (which I didn't want to do as I wasn't sure if my alarm would work with the phone turned off). Either way it didn't matter in the end as I was awake by 6.30 a.m. as I had to go in to Geneva today. But add that to the three or four "random" calls I get on my home phone each day (which I don't answer and also keep blocking as and when), I'm starting to feel like it would be nice to get a break from "freaky" for a while!