This and that!

It's been relatively busy again this week, as I'm trying to get the house tidied (i.e. get rid of more junk) and sorted in time for my family's arrival next week. I'm so looking forward to seeing them and while it will be cold it should be nice weather during their stay. I'd already figured out a meal plan for most days and made a shopping list for when I went grocery shopping on Thursday. That plan was scuppered though as André came over to pick up some mail I had for him and casually mentioned that he was going to spend a long weekend in Amsterdam with a mate and "you can take me to the airport tomorrow right"? Well of course I can, but there's nothing like a bit of advanced warning either is there! So then I figured I'd go shopping on the Friday - well that was until Jen phoned me at 7.30 in the morning to ask if I could pick Charlie up from school and give him lunch as both she and the babe had doctors' appointments on the Friday. Turns out Jen had collapsed at work on Thursday and they called an ambulance as they were so worried about her. When she got to the ER a friend of hers happened to be the admitting nurse and told her there were 18 ambulances ahead of her (????) and she was looking at about five hours before she could be seen by a doctor, and that was assuming no more urgent cases showed up in the meantime! Since she was feeling slightly better by this point she jumped on the phone and was able to get an emergency appointment with her doctor for both her and Elynn (who has been coughing for a few days - thank you daycare). After doing some kind of scan (my apologies to the nurses out there, can't remember what kind it was) and blood tests, it turns out she has developed gallstones - the cause of her excruciating pain. My first thought was of Mary Moon and her kidney stones and her description of just how painful they are - Jen said she was in less pain when she gave birth!!! I'm not sure what the treatment will be but I already realize just how right I was not to sign up to volunteer at Les Restos du Coeur just yet as I just knew that things would be tricky for a little while, although I suppose nobody could have predicted Jen getting taken to hospital on her first week back at work!

The other day I got a FB friend request from Rob J. My first reaction was to just hit delete as he was doubtless a Nigerian prince who wanted to put $10 million into my bank account. But then I took another look and saw that my sister was another of his friends and realized that it was my cousin from North Wales. I haven't seen him in over 38 years (I was pregnant last time I saw him) and while it was nice to chat back and forth with him, it can be a bit difficult when you really no longer have much in common. They were a very nice family but I was much closer to my cousins on my dad's side because we lived nearer to each other. Either way, it was nice to catch up a little but when he sent me a request to follow his cat on FB (????) I realized we won't be in touch that much!

Anyhow, I finally got my shopping done after Jordan finished work on Friday and could take care of Charlie. Turns out the supermarket had a special offer that day whereby they credited 10% of your grocery bill back to your loyalty card, and as it was a a big shop, I did very well that day after all! When I got home there was a note in my mailbox to say that someone from the Mairie had stopped by to give me my Christmas gift from the Maire. They give these gifts to everyone in the village over age 65 so this is my second year to receive a small hamper from them and again, it was beautifully presented!

Note the bottle of white wine in the
top right hand corner!!! Insert
happy face emoji here!

Earlier this week I got an email from Norton (the anti-virus I use) to say that my annual subscription would be up in February and the new price would be €104 "to reflect the going rates"!!! Hang on, last year it was €64 and I was already pretty unhappy with them because every couple of weeks they discover something else dodgy on my computer but for the modest sum of €XXX I can upgrade to their premium service and fix the lastest snaffu! I looked on a couple of evaluation sites and many people said they were sick of Norton forever coming back for "just another €XXXX" so it wasn't just me. So I decided to cancel and put in the comments that their habit of forever coming back for more money was more than irritating and their new price reflecting an almost 100% increase over the previous year was hard to justify, in my opinion! And whaddaya know, the next day I got another email from them offering me a "special deal" of €49 for the year if I would come back to them. So I did! I will keep an eye on it though as there are many anti-virus systems out there, but I'm really rather pleased that I put my foot down for once!

In other news, when I opened my shutters this morning I saw it was snowing - and that my neighbour had left her car window open! So I went round and knocked on her door to tell her and ended up having a coffee with her. Turns out she'd stopped to chat to another neighbour yesterday and had forgotten to put her window up last night. Then she went on to tell me about another daft thing she'd done but I had her beat this time. On Wednesday I ran into town as I wanted to buy a new pair of jeans. I ended up buying a pair of jeans and a diaphanous sparkly top, thinking I would wear it for Christmas Day. As they no longer have changing rooms in the store I tried them on when I got home but the jeans were way too big (another first) and the top turned out to be waaayyyy too small. What the heck, am I turning into something that looks like a hard boiled egg on toothpicks now! So the next day I took them back and explained to the assistant that while it said on the receipt that I had bought two pairs of trousers, it was in fact one pair of jeans and a top. She looked at the receipt and said "oh that's probably a combi short" (which is where the top is attached to a pair of shorts - like dungarees with the legs cut short) and sure enough, when we looked at my "top" it was a combi short and I must have been trying to put my head through the leg hole. No wonder it was tight! My neighbour burst out laughing and every time I looked at her after that she got another fit of the giggles! Since she was still in some pain from her recent operation, I drove her about 2 km up the road to a local farm shop where she usually buys her cheese. Since I know that my family love cheese I thought I'd buy some too, but it turns out they sell their own eggs, grass fed beef, organic yogurts and so on, and while it's a bit more expensive than you'd find in the supermarkets, I think I'll try to do as much of my shopping as I can there and at the local farmers' markets from now on!

Moving on, a pub owner in Britain recently started a petition to push for a new general election, and within a couple of days it had over two million signatures. As far as I know it's over three million right now and apparently once a petition hits 10,000 signatures it is supposed to trigger a debate in Parliament. I know of course there won't be a new general election but I signed it anyway as I feel very strongly that this dreadful government campaigned on a manifesto that was immediately thrown out the window once they were elected. Anyway, one man commented that he lived in France and had signed the petition (you have to be a British citizen but it doesn't matter where you live) and then received a response saying that if he wished to keep his right to vote in the next election he had to send them proof of his identity???? Say what???? No he didn't have to do that at all - it was simply a way of trying to intimidate him. I have three email addresses and use one for official stuff (like voting and naturalisation issues, etc.), one for general chitchat, and a throwaway address for things like supermarket receipts and so on. Thankfully I used the throwaway email address to sign the petition, and while I didn't get a notification about my voting rights, I did get a snotty, badly drafted email response basically saying how wonderful the Labour Party are and how they're going to do amazing things, bring about world peace and put a man on Mars very soon! All crap, but there will be a debate in Parliament - they could hardly refuse it could they. Nothing will come of it but I hope old Two Tier is feeling the heat right now - it certainly looks like it!

And someone else who is definitely feeling the heat right now is the French President after the vote of no confidence last week. His government is effectively dismissed and he has to name a new Prime Minister who will, in turn, name a new government. He went on television the other night and what he won't do is resign because "how will we manage without his wonderfulness"? In true Macron form, nothing was his fault and he would not accept responsibility for others' failings! Whatever happened to "the buck stops with me"? Anyhoo we'll see I suppose but these are interesting times, to be sure!

Anyhoo, what with my family coming out on Tuesday I don't think I'll have much time for blog reading/commenting. I hope to be back online before Christmas though, but in the meantime, enjoy the run up to Christmas and I look forward to catching up soon!