A whirlwind week!

I knew last week was going to be a busy one and ho boy, was it ever. I don't usually mind as long as I can keep on top of where I've got to be and when, but sometimes it felt like I never got out of sixth gear! At least all the dashing around allowed me time to listen to my latest book on Audible - even if I'm not sure that I'm particularly enjoying it. I don't know what it is about this book - maybe it's the author's voice that grates on me, I'm not sure - but even while I think, on balance, it's a good book I'm struggling. I won't mention the name of it because I'll just sound like a peasant since she is both a successful poet and writer, but I obviously (obviously!) don't have the soul of poet and am struggling. She has a good story to tell but I feel like all I'm hearing is "so I Google earthed my home last year, and my son's bike was in the front yard" (followed by a 20 minute soliloquy), and "then I Googled it the year before and my daughter's stroller was in the yard" (followed by another soliloquy) and I'm thinking "lady, just get on with the bloody book, would ya"! So anyhoo the jury's still out on this one!

On Monday I was determined to go to yoga, despite the fact that just a couple of hours later I had my naturalisation ceremony, so it was a bit of a dash to get home and changed before showing up for that! While I was sitting listening to the speech welcoming new citizens I couldn't help thinking about how lovely I find France to be and yet how f....d up this government is trying to destroy it - oh and how they "forgot to mention the €50 billion more in debt the country is than was announced prior to the legislative elections in the summer"! There were about 20 of us receiving our déclaration de naturalisation that day and in most cases the Maires of the respective villages were there to present the papers to their new "citizens". Not in my case though but that was ok with me. When I mentioned this to my neighbour she said she had seen him the previous week at the lunch for Octobre Rose (the breast cancer support movement) and he had actually looked away from her when he walked past!!!! This man knew her husband as he had been on the local council for years and had been invited to their home on many an occasion, and knew that her husband had recently died, but didn't even acknowledge her presence, let alone extend his condolences! So nah, I didn't need that jerk handing me my paperwork, thank you very much.  After that I had to dash off to sewing club as I have the keys to open up, so all in all Monday was a very long day!

Then on Tuesday I had to drop my car off to get winter tyres put on, so thought I'd be good and walk back into town in the evening to pick it up (about 45 minutes). Wednesday I was up and out at seven to take my neighbour to drop her car off at the garage and then dash back into town for 11.30 to pick up my new French ID and passport. The ironic thing is that according to all my paperwork I have been French since last November (so two months after I applied) so it intrigues me somewhat that I had to go to Grenoble in March for my citizenshp interview. I mean, why bother if I was already French?

Since my neighbour's car wasn't ready that evening I suggested to her that the next day we both walk into the village to catch the little ol' bone-breaker of a bus into town so that she will be confident enough to know that she can find her way round the bus system (spartan as it is) if ever she's stuck. I told her it'd be like going on a girls day out and she laughed, but in the end it turns out that the young heating engineer who had been called out to service her heating system said that he was going past the garage and dropped her off on his way to Annecy! Now I'm sure this is totally against company rules (I mean, would she be covered by his insurance if he had an accident), but it did go to show that there are some nice people out there too doesn't it!

The parking situation in town is now absolutely hell, even though the Thursday market has now been moved from the town square to the side streets. The problem is that when the commuter train (the Léman Express) was inaugurated people were (rightly) encouraged to use that to travel into Geneva for work. Trouble is, while "park 'n ride" is a great idea, there's not much point "riding" if they hadn't given any thought to the "park" side of the equation. This Maire is the guy who decided it wasn't necessary to have any kind of ramp or elevator at the train station to allow people to get across the train tracks, and now it would seem that encouraging people to catch the train all while not making sufficient parking spaces available to them - well you just end up with people parked all the way into town and a lot of pisssed off local shopkeepers whose customers just give up! So on Thursday, knowing I wouldn't be able to park because of (a) the market and (b) the commuters, I again got up at the crack of dawn and caught the bone-shaker bus into town for my pilates lesson, and while that was fine I subsequently learned that the jacket I routinely wear in this weather - well it's not totally waterproof! Damn! Since I got there so early I was chatting to our teacher and nearly fainted when she told me that she teaches 28 classes a week! She's in her early 60s and has thighs that could probably crack walnuts, so talk about feeling deflated after feeling so proud of myself for walking into town on Tuesday!

Anyhoo, on Friday I decided that I was going to go out and treat myself to a totally waterproof jacket - (which would obviously be necessary if I was going to keep up with all this walking)! So I drove down to the Mountain Store in Passy, found exactly what I wanted, along with a more appropriate (read "waterproof") backpack and then headed out for a walk around the lake - one of my favourite places round here. When I picked up my passport on Thursday I asked about how to go about getting on the electoral register and she told me to take x,y,z paperwork to my local Mairie on Monday. Well I looked it up online instead when I got back from the lake and within about five minutes it was done! And the next day I got a phone call from the secretary to say that I was registered! Talk about efficient!

Then on Saturday a group of us from sewing club agreed to meet up in Scientrier to drop off the beanies we had made for the cancer survivors' association and would you believe we had actually made 85 all told for the association to hand out to any of the ladies who wanted them. Then we went off to enrol in the 8km walk that was also being held to raise funds for the Association, and given the size of the crowd (maybe a couple of hundred) I'm pretty sure they easily raised over €1,000 just from the walk participants alone. When we got back there was a zumba class for anyone who wanted to join in (no thanks), but I thoroughly enjoyed myself that day and when you're yacking non-stop, 8km goes by very quickly!

Anyone for zumba!

And finally today I made it down to the château for the exhibition of work by local artists. I've mentioned before that "art" usually doesn't do much for me - well too much of it, at least - but by golly there was some talented artists' work on display!

The château in La Roche!

Then I met up with Jordan and Jen in the château's grounds as we knew that La Roche was having its annual Venetian-style carnaval parade. We didn't know where or when, but as luck would have it, we were seated exactly where the parade started and got to see everyone up close and personal. The weather was lovely and having a bird's eye view of the parade was the icing on top of a very lovely cake!

It's been a couple of weeks (again)!

Looking at my posting history I see that I'm only posting approximately every two weeks (unless I've just come back from holiday I guess), so you can probably tell life is just wending along in its usual very routine way! There's nothing wrong with that of course as long as (in my opinion) I'm not wasting too much time on the computer going down rabbit holes. First thing I usually do when I get up is read a few blogs and then see what's happening in the news, although I sometimes wonder about doing that too as there might be a good case to be made for "if you can't do anything about it, why not leave it where it is"! When I was still working I would put Sky News UK on while I was getting breakfast but I just heard tonight that (allegedly) they are shutting down!!! If that's true I'm afraid I can easily see why. They went from being a pretty decent news outlet (in my opinion) to absolutely biased one-sided crap so I was happy to drop them when I disconnected my TV three years ago now. That being said Sky News Australia are great and can also be very funny, so I have to wonder how two news outlets seem to have fared so differently!

Mind you, the other day the death of a Youtube "personality" during a muckbang came across my news feed. I mean, have you any idea what a muckbang is? For those of you with dirty minds ha ha, because it is apparently an "event" where the person buys a ton of food and then films themselves gorging on it! Seriously? Are people that desperate for fame that they would stoop this low? I understand that some people have an eating disorder but I think in so many of these cases they have a "fame hunger" disorder instead. This young woman was either from Japan or Korea (I can't remember now) and gorged herself to such an extent that her stomach burst and she died! How sad is that, and what a waste of young life!

In other news, last Saturday 12 of us went out to lunch to celebrate the three Libran birthdays in the family (me, Jen's mom and Jen). It was a really nice (if loud) time, and as I was walking back to Jordan and Jen's place with André for birthday cake, he was telling me that his mates were pushing him to ask the Israeli girl he knows out. It's quite obvious that they both like each other very much, religion would never be a problem (I lived with a Muslim for five years and our different religions were never an issue), but he was also quite enjoying his single guy life too. I haven't heard from him since but we'll see how that plays out, I guess!

When we got back to their place, Jordan discovered that their cat (Lenni the Horrible Cat) had caught a small lizard on the balcony and bitten its tail off, so we were faced with the bizarre task of trying to catch a wriggling tail-less lizard and another wriggling body-less tail. My suggestion to put the tail into the double cream to whip it up to go with dessert didn't go down too well, unfortunately!

I had to drive into Geneva the other week for my bi-annual mammogram (always fun) at the very modern hospital with about five parking places the size of a Mini Cooper. Of course if you were lucky enough to find a parking place you'd still probably have to climb out through the trunk of your car but even so, it would probably be a good enough omen to go buy a lottery ticket! I finally figured out the best way to get there on public transport was to catch a bus from the border into central Geneva and then a tram back out towards the border which stopped at the hospital. Much more efficient, but afterwards I just decided to walk back to the border to the parking garage as it was only about a 45 minute walk if you're not in a hurry. Years ago, when I was working in D.C., I remember reading about an older lady in the poorer part of D.C. who got so tired of waiting for public transport that she just started walking everywhere instead and never stopped. I'm not so sure how advisable that would be nowadays but she certainly looked as slim and graceful as some of those African tribespeople you see pictured in glossy magazines, so maybe there's something to be said for this walking business!

With that in mind, a couple of ladies at sewing club mentioned that there was going to be an event in the local village to raise money for October Rose (do they call it Pink October in English?), the charity movement that supports breast cancer sufferers. Two of our ladies have had cancer and indeed one is still wearing what I would call a "skull cap" or beanie to cover her hair loss, so she asked if we would be up for making a few beanies to donate to the local hospital. They have to be very soft because apparently it is difficult to wear anything on your head if you've just lost your hair, so the club bought several metres of soft fabric and for two weeks we have kinda set up a production line and had made around 50 at last count. I was shocked when they told me that these things go for between €40 and €60 so I was really glad she asked us to do that. Moreover on the day we hand them over there will be an 8 km walk (not sponsored - they make their money from the food and drinks set up) so a few of us will be doing that also!

The production line!

Then the other day my favourite neighbour came round and asked if I would mind terribly taking her to a hospital appointment near the Swiss border to see the anaesthesiologist (sp?) for an upcoming operation as she's too afraid to drive on the motorway. So I'll be taking her (quite happily) to that appointment, plus her operation and to drop her car off in town at the garage. When I mentioned this to my other friend she told me to give her a call if ever she was stuck as she would be happy to help out too! My life doesn't have the fullest schedule as you can see so between us I'm sure we can sort it out! This is the lady who lost her husband in March of this year and can you believe she has only just received her first widow's pension - after six months!!! I think that's scandalous as she is in her 70s and not working, but she has always been very good with money and was always able to squirrel money away "just in case". Given how bad her late husband (the bank manager?) was with money I'm actually not surprised she always handled the money and was able to make it, even despite my other neighbour and I both offering to help out!

And finally today was the day Charlie's school had organized the "cross country run" to raise money for student activites. As I said above, they don't make money from these events by having you get people to sponsor you (which I always hated), but on the food and drinks. The younger children were asked to go in costume, so Charlie went as the fastest creature known to man - the panda!!

The younger children had just one circuit of a flat route to run and surprise of surprises, Charlie actually won it - not that he was that bothered as he was more excited by the packet of mini Smarties they all got when they crossed the finish line!

The little girl in second place is
his best friend - and just as 
loud as him!

There were about 10 races in all, getting progressively more difficult with the age of the children. Everyone cheered everyone on, but I think the loudest cheers were for the kids who came in last, and quite rightly so. I had thought about volunteering to run with them but since the later races involved running downhill to the parking lot and then back up again, I'm so glad I didn't offer! At the end they sprung a surprise on the four teachers and the school's director and asked the five older ladies to run with the last kids. I'm not so sure how much of it they ran, but they were good sports and all five crossed the finish line holding hands - and in last place! It was a lovely morning and I offered to walk back down to Jordan and Jen's apartment rather than trying to squeeze into a space between two car seats. It wasn't a long or difficult walk and since I'm going to walk into town (and maybe back up) tomorrow to see an art exhibitioin at the château, and maybe do the same later in the week to pick up my new French passport, who knows, keep this up and I too may soon start looking like an African tribeswoman!

The château in St. Jeoire