Having a rethink!

As from this Wednesday France will be opening up a little more, with our curfew being pushed back from 9 p.m. to 11 p.m., and all restrictions being scheduled to cease by end-June. Covid numbers are up slightly with the opening up a few weeks ago, but not dramatically so. There was one death in Haute Savoie in the past 24 hours and the R number is 0.83, so things are still going in the right direction thankfully. To be honest, unless that changes dramatically for the worse I don't see them being able to impose more lockdowns/restrictions because people's livelihoods are being destroyed - but that's just my opinion and what would I know! That being said, my Italian evening class has started back up (there are only four of us in the class anyway) and yoga will restart and my gym will open as from 9th June. Pilates also starts up again on Thursday but I've been thinking about it and I think I'm going to drop out. My life has been pretty "programmed" since I retired and what with starting to look after the Munchkin once a week I don't want to have a commitment every day and not have free time to plan hikes or meet up with friends. The pilates teacher was good and I felt great afterwards but I never actually enjoyed it so I think I'll give it a miss from now on. I mean, if I want more exercise I can go walking, down to the gym or take another yoga class, so decision made then! The only exercise I've been getting these past couple of weeks is my twice-daily slug-flinging and I can already feel the muscles in my right arm starting to develop! If they introduce slug-flinging as an Olympic event, you've got Team GB right here. We've had so much rain that the buggers are everywhere! They've ruined my courgette and chili pepper plants and are desperately trying to get at my lettuce plants - hence the daily arm exercises. I'm going to run round to my neighbour and beg some coffee grounds off her (I only drink capsule coffee but apparently slugs don't like the smell of coffee grounds), and I'm also going to save eggshells and crush those up to put around my plants to see if it helps as I don't want to use chemicals. I pulled up a lettuce to have with our dinner tonight and you have to be very careful how you clean them. I left all the outer leaves in the compost and then basically pressure sprayed what was left. Can't have too much protein in your diet can you!

I also want more free time available because, as I mentioned some time ago, this year I joined Pays Rochois en Transition, which is a local group dedicated to zero waste, recycling, community gardens, etc. They also run a Repair Café twice a month and have just set up a seed exchange for anyone interested in gardening. I'm thinking I would like to get involved with them, but don't know how much time I will be able to offer. They do a lot more than that, of course, but this is what interests me the most and you can't be everywhere can you. Heck if I could be everywhere I'd get around to cleaning my windows as they are embarrassing they're so dirty. Another disadvantage of the sunshine - you can see all the muck! I also learned from the local Magazine de Saint Sixt that a project is underway to build what I hope is a small kinda grocery store/café behind the Mairie, which pleases me no end because goodness knows we need something to replace Stan's café!

André went into Geneva Friday afternoon to go swimming in the lake with some friends, then they had band practice and he called me to say that Max had invited him to stay over (curfew, you see). I said it must feel weird to be 33 and letting your mom know you'd been invited for a sleepover so he asked if he could have 10 euros "to buy some sweeties"! Then today Max suggested they drive up to Chamonix for lunch and André said it was glorious. I'm glad to see he's finally getting to have a social life again after all this time (I guess there's still hope for me then)! I've talked about Max before. He's a friend of both my kids (and is also Jordan's boss) and André was telling me that he's in the process of putting in a €20,000 stair lift for his girlfriend, Elise, since she is wheelchair-bound following a car accident with a wild boar a few years ago (which brings home to me how lightly I escaped after my own encounter with a wild boar that time)! When I asked how they met André told me that Max had been out to dinner with his parents when he spotted Elise having dinner with her friends and chatted with her briefly. He was apparently so smitten with her that he raced back into the restaurant and asked if they would give him the contact phone number for the person that had made their reservation - which, of course, they wouldn't! So knowing roughly the area she had said she lived, he went door to door asking if anyone knew a beautiful young girl in a wheelchair. Someone did, and the rest, as they say, is history! Damn, I didn't know Max was such a romantic! I've always liked him but heaven knows there were times I would have liked to strangle him too, not least of all about 15 years ago when he must have been out partying on New Year's Eve, had too much to drink, and called me around four in the morning asking me to pick him up - but he didn't know where he was! Luckily for him I hadn't had a single drink that evening (I don't like NYE and I was on my own anyway), so I set off looking for him in town at 4 a.m. and brought him back here to sleep it off! Who would have thought that little divil would turn into the rather nice young man he is now!

Yesterday we were invited over to Jordan and Jen's to belatedly celebrate Jordan's birthday and give him the symbols for his drum set (he was dead pleased). Babe was a bit cranky as he'd had his first vaccinations so I got to hold him and walk with him and tell him silly stories - and then he was all smiles afterwards, probably wondering what all that gobblydigook was about. André was imploring him to say tonton (uncle) and he just smiled so André asked me what I thought his first words would be. I told him my feelings are "would ya get your ugly mush out of my face for once" because, seriously, every time he opens his eyes he's got André's mush right there two inches from his face. I tittered, but André didn't think that was funny for some reason!

But tonight André was obviously finding something funny because I'm sitting downstairs and I can hear him roaring laughing up in his bedroom. So I asked him what he was watching and he said Impractical Jokers. In this sketch they have one of the guys pretending to be in space and giving a talk to a bunch of young school kids about what it's like to be in space (the teacher's in on it, of course). The "non-astronauts" are feeding lines to the "astronaut" about what he should do and say. Have to say I had a bit of a giggle too!