How not to save money!

I think I mentioned before that the year started off pretty well from a walking point of view. I'd gotten a few walks in but then it tailed off a bit with the bad weather. So the other day, as it was cold but sunny, I drove to the lake at Passy for a walk (NB while I love this walk I really need to challenge myself more as this is a totally flat walk)! Just before you turn off for the lake there is a large store called The Mountain Store so I thought I would drop in there as I needed to buy a sleeping bag. One of our family Christmas gifts is a long weekend where we need a sleeping bag. Thing is, I'd given both mine away about six months ago to the homeless shelter but now of course I need a sleeping bag. So I stopped in and got my sleeping bag, plus a new jacket (I obviously need a jacket which corresponds to every 1° change in temperature), plus a couple of tops and a new bathroom scale. The one I have at the moment was frankly cheap tat and I'm pretty sure I can change my weight by about 10 lbs depending on where I place it! I have a weakness for sports stores, forever trying to find just the right top/jacket that is waterproof/windproof but not too heavy. Anyway I came out of there having spent what to me is a small fortune and with a set of scales that does me no favours at all!!!!! So now I'm pissed and while it's not exactly a 1 January resolution I've finally realized I need to do something about my excess weight (I probably could do with losing about 30 lbs at this point). When I got home I spent an hour cleaning and preparing stuff for the next day when Jen called and asked me if I could keep Elynn as she had picked up Charlie's lurgy and was now sick too. I'd had Charlie last Wednesday and then spent the next week coughing and spluttering too so I'm hoping that's it for this winter! I guess the moral of the story is don't procrastinate because if you think you'll do a task/walk "later", something always seems to come along and bugger up the best laid plans!

When I went down to St. Pierre on Monday for yoga they were sitting in fog, which was really weird because just driving the few km back to my place we were bathed in bright sunshine. Geneva sits in a basin and is often in fog and yet if you go just a few hundred metres higher up you can get out into the sunshine (one of the benefits of going up in the mountains I guess). At the end of every yoga session we do a 10 minute relaxation and she "wakes everyone up" at the end with different kinds of sounds - often windchimey sounds. Well this time she used a handpan and the sound coming from it was so beautiful I thought how wonderful it would be to wake up to that every day, rather than the bzzzz, bzzzz, bzzzz of an alarm clock. I wasn't the only one who found it delightful but when I saw that they go for around €100++++ I thought better of it or I'll be eating bread and gruel before I know it! The handpan she used had a hole in the top of it and one of the men commented how it would make a great dish to serve fondue. Ha ha, a typical Savoyard comment!

Handpan!

Sewing was cancelled on Monday night though as the heating had conked out in the entire building, which also meant that the library and the daycare in the same building had to be closed. I'm always the one sweating cobs at sewing and to think that the one time I might have been comfortable with my penguin blood, they had to go and close the bloody place!

I had to go into town on Thursday (which is market day) so stopped by the cheap stall-holder for fruit and veg and yet again came away with a ton of stuff for just €20 (which is an absolute steal and it's decent quality stuff). However I realize that if I'm going to keep going to this guy I need to use it quickly or freeze it, so I rummaged around in my basement for the vacuum sealer I'd bought ages ago and bingo, I hope I'll get to make better use of these deals in the future! That being said, earlier this week there was a knock at my door and it turned out that market traders had come down from Normandy and were trying to sell their fruit and veg down here. Now I've seen these people before and while some people say they're just casing the houses to see which are occupied, I have bought stuff from them in the past so maybe there are the bad mixed in with the good. That being said, while we obviously can't grow everything around here because of the altitude/temperatures, I just can't fathom buying potatoes that come from 800 km away! We do get sellers coming up from Italy to sell their stuff but then most of that is coming up from the south of Italy and is harder to find here, whereas potatoes - not so much!

I spoke to my sister at the weekend and she told me they'd just booked a long weekend in Venice in February (for Carnaval)! They had this trip on offer with our local bus company but (a) I've been to Venice before and while it is indeed beautiful it will be very very crowded, and (b) they do Carnaval here too so nah, I'll give that one a miss (although I'm pretty sure it would probably have been fully booked the day after the catalogue came out anyway). This is the sister that just got back from a long weekend in Prague and while I have also been there I was just 15 at the time (on our way to what is now the Ukraine with the school) so I only have vague memories of it. She told me about all the high end shops in Wenceslas Square where you have to wait to be invited in (they do that in Geneva too) and while she obviously couldn't afford it anyway she would go if she had that kind of money. I guess that's the difference between me and her then, because I wouldn't be interested in those kinds of goods even if I had that kind of money - they just don't float my boat! Still, it's probably a moot point anyway, right!

The French just carried out their latest census and while the initial paperwork was dropped off in the mailbox, a lady came round to each individual house to give out a code to access the census online. I happened to mention to her that I had no idea what the surface area of my home is and had just guessed the first time I filled out the paperwork. She told me that she lived in the same model home and that I had over-estimated by about 100 squatre metres. Ha, the census people probably thought my upstairs bedroom flew off in the last storm. Then today I got to vote in my very first French election. As soon as I got my citizenship I went into town to get a passport and then stopped in at the Mairie in my village to get my name on the electoral list. But then about 10 days ago I got an email to say that my request hadn't gone through, giving several reasons, one of which might be that I'd accessed the portal more than once. I was just about to head back off to the Mairie to get it sorted out when my electoral card came through the mail. So I walked into the village this afternoon and got to vote in my very first legislative elections. It was tough though because while I have a favourite party I didn't know anything about the candidate, but then the young mayor of Jordan and Jen's little town was also on the list and everyone speaks extremely highly of him as a dynamic and engaged young man. Given that he represents my second favourite party I voted for him. If there's a run off we get to go back again next Sunday but I'm crossing my fingers that he wins first time around. It's exciting stuff isn't it - and could only be bettered, in my opinion, by a snap general election in the UK. Fingers crossed!

And finally, an "old lady blooper". Well not so much an old lady blooper but something I saw on Very British Problems on FB. True story - three elderly gents were having a pint in the pub when one of them was suddenly taken ill and an ambulance was called. When someone asked if it was serious, one of his drinking buddies said "it must have been, he didn't finish his Guinness"! I hope the old gent was ok, but I loved the comment too!