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!