Better stick to paper cups!

Temperatures dropped quite dramatically last week and are really not normal for July right now but I don't mind that one bit - I start to feel alive again! I don't doubt they'll start soaring again soon but for the moment I'm enjoying the break. Things with my favourite neighbour are still fraught and apart from the emotional turmoil she is pretty much on her knees with fatigue as she will find out this week if her buyers have been accepted for their loan - if so, then it's all systems go. Her daughter is helping her as much as she can and she really has done an amazing job already of getting rid of so much stuff but ....! They say the three most stressful things you can go through are the death of a spouse, divorce and moving so I can only begin to imagine how much she she has had on her plate. She asked me round for coffee again the other day (to talk obviously) and I could see that she was waivering so just said "you've made your bed for the time being and if you don't give it a shot you'll never know, will you (about moving back to her home town) but if you find out for whatever reason that it isn't working out, you know you can always come back - don't hesitate to do so out of pride or embarassment because nobody will care"! I think as it's coming down to the wire it's hitting her and while neither of her children want her to go, as I said, if she doesn't go for it now, she'll never know and probably regret not giving it a shot! Mind you, seeing what she's going through trying to empty what was a very orderly, well-kept house is spurring me on to get rid of more and more stuff. At the moment I'm dragging pieces of wood up from the basement to take to the tip (hopefully someone can find a use for them) and while it's hard work physically, everything that goes out of this house makes the air feel just a tad more breathable!

Thankfully I'm also finding out that I'm spending less time on Youtube going down rabbit holes. Oh I still enjoy some of it but I'm absolutely sick of AI and the "startled" AI generated memes some creators are using or the AI generated voiceovers. I find it really irritating and while I'm sure AI has many positive uses I'm not so sure it won't make things much more negative in the long run!

The other day I was awoken at 6 am by a text message from my ex-husband simply saying "what's your email"? No "hi, how are you doing, how are the kids, and/or sorry for waking you up at 6 am", just "what's your email". My first reaction was annoyance because next month we would have been married 40 years and I have always had the same email address. He obviously also has my telephone number (since that's where he sent the text message to), can access me through Facebook or through my kids, so yeah buddy, you have my email address already so look the damn thing up yourself as I no longer "wife" for you! I didn't say any of that, of course, because I know damn well if he contacts me it's only some chaos or other he will be stirring up so I just ignored it. I happened to mention it to Jen when I was watching Charlie the other day and she told me words to the effect that he said he was regretting moving back to the US and, more importantly, was missing out on the grandchildren!!! I don't know if that means he wants to move back here but while he could pretty easily do so, he would have to reapply for residency. He'd definitely meet the financial requirements but since this idiot cancelled his wonderful post-retirement medical insurance with his employer he is now under his gf's medical, so he'd have to look for something separately. They already tried to get her into France when they first got together but were refused so if he did want to come back I'm assuming it would be on his own! Cue the intrigue. Of course I may be reading waaayyyy too much into a simple text message but I can/could read this guy like a book so I'll be curious to see what's going on when he comes out here next month!

Talking of looking after Charlie, as is now our custom we went to the park and then went to a café for a drink before going to pick Elynn up from daycare. So he's sitting there telling me that when you drink from a glass you have to be sooooo careful not to break it because you can get hurt. I told him that was very true, but then he goes "and then the policeman will come and put you in jail"! Huh???? I told him that wasn't true but he insisted it was. And then if you managed to escape they would throw you into the lava from a volcano! Huh???? And then if you escaped from that you'd have to run to the ocean and try to swim away, but the nasty shark would start chasing you. So I asked him if there were no kindly dragons who could save you (we're into kindly dragons at the moment) and he said "nope, they're all asleep"! That was when the guy at the next table cracked up laughing, saying he'd got quite the imagination hadn't he. The moral of the story, therefore, would seem to be only buy paper cups from now on!

Anyhoo, back to the plot. Yesterday I went on our old fogies day trip to the Col de la Forclaz. I wasn't sure if I'd been there before (turns out I hadn't) but I can't believe such a lovely spot is only about 90 minutes from home and I'd "missed it" all these years! Our first stop was at the Ecomuseum of Wood and Forestry and we spent about 90 minutes being entertained by a very well-informed young man who knew his stuff inside out. There was us (a bus load of oldies) and a group of littles, about Charlie's age, so the noise level was pretty much off the scale. He explained to us that this particular valley had once been very lush (still is as far as I'm concerned) but deforestation had taken its toll, so as early as 1898 steps had been taken to protect it. He showed us how they bought timber down from the mountains over the ages and how it had been possible to do so much with just the use of a watermill, before the advent of electricty. As I say, it really was pretty interesting!

After that we headed up to the Col de la Forclaz for lunch and while the road up was very pretty, it did remind of that heart-stopping drive in the Gorges de Piana in Corsica. As the bus could only take us so far, we had to walk the last 15 minutes up a very steep hill to get to the restaurant. As probably the youngest on the bus, I was praying I wouldn't be on my hands and knees regurgitating a lung while all the others hopped up there like mountain goats, but that never happened. Some people walked slowly with canes but still they made it. Many of the people on the bus I now recognize but since I don't know their names I've given them names in my mind like "the lady from the Benite", "the lady from Intermarché cheese counter", "the man whose teeth don't fit", but the most impressive one has to be the 90 year old lady who was sitting behind me on the way up. I was listening to her and her 79 year old companion talking about "the good old days" and how much they appreciated everything while having pretty much nothing. It was lovely to listen (eavesdrop?) to them talking about how they wore wooden sabots/clogs, made their own butter, used to use communal ovens etc. and then, as we were almost there, she spotted paragliders close to our bus and told the other lady that her granddaughters had offered her a jump as a gift and she'd actually done a tandem jump for her 80th birthday!!! Wow, so she naturally became "Madame Intrepid" (and I want to be her when I grow up)!

Lunch was a reblochonade, which is basically a local reblochon cheese cooked in a brasier (not a brassière for those of you with warped minds), poured over boiled potatoes along with salad and a charcuterie board. As a side note, charcuterie in French refers only to cut meats and if someone volunteered to bring charcuterie to a pot luck they would bring nothing but meat - no veggies or dip. The staff were great, kept coming round to see if we wanted more of anything and I think we were all so very, very impressed with the whole set up. I'm wondering if I might invite everyone up there for Elynn's birthday (on 21st August) and André's birthday on 30th August. I'll have to see how available everyone is at any given date!

Reblochonade!

The only down side was that it was very hot and very loud, but if that's all you have to complain about life isn't too bad at all, is it. The owner came round several times to see if everything was okay and when we were ready to leave he pulled his minibus out and offered to take those with walking difficulties back down to the bus. I walked back down with my 85 year old neighbour on the bus and when he apologized for slowing me down I just laughed and told him this was my natural speed and not to worry!

Lake Annecy!

As we walked down we passed a "more relaxed" little place next to the gift shops and quite honestly I like these places just as much as the bigger, fancier restaurants!

Burger bar!

Drinks bar (when it's open)!

When we got back to the bus our driver asked if we had had time for a digestif and suggested that he bring round his homemade hooch for anyone that wanted to try it. They all do this, and really you only get a thimblefull of firewater (the driver obviously doesn't partake) but it's a nice touch and is a way of saying thank you for the generous hat that is passed around on the way back!

From there he dropped us in Annecy for a couple of hours but since I'm pretty sure everyone on the bus had been to Annecy hundreds of times, most of us walked through the park and sat and had a drink on the lake's edge.

I took this picture not because I'm a creep that likes to hang around kiddies' play areas, but because this is the park where that monster stabbed three babies (and two adults) about three years ago. Thankfully everyone survived but I hope he is rotting in hell in a French prison and will do so for a very, very long time! I ended up having a drink at the local pétanque club where it was nice to watch the games that were taking place. Jordan is trying to teach Charlie but as you might imagine, Charlie just wants to see how far he can throw the ball. Hopefully he will pick it up sooner rather than later because the French take pétanque very, very seriously!