This and that!

For the past few weeks (months?) I've been having a few problems with some aspects of the old fogies' club accounts. On 24 December I transferred a nearly €13,000 deposit to the travel agent who will be dealing with our trip to Spain in September, and it went through no problem. At the same time I did a bank transfer to the caterer who had catered our Christmas lunch. Again, no problem - or so I thought. About a month later Monique (the president) asked me if I'd made the payment and I confirmed I'd done the two transfers on Christmas Eve, but apparently the caterer hadn't received the money. We tried chasing it up but the bank could find no record of it (even though I'd printed the receipt) so in the end we decided I'd just cut a cheque and mail it to them - which I did! Then about a month later Monique tells me that they still hadn't received the money - and I'm starting to get paranoid that they must think I'm a bloody idiot and I'm also completely flumoxed! In the end we were talking last week about putting a block on the cheque and hand delivering a new one to them, so Monique called them to confirm that was what we were going to do. And then we get a call back to say they'd found the cheque - in their mailbox!!!! Huh??? Turns out that apparently their usual mailman brings the mail into their offices and puts it on the desk, but our cheque had apparently been sitting in their mailbox for about a month! Again, huh????? While I definitely felt relieved to know it wasn't anything to do with me, I do wonder about their "accounting department" somewhat if they don't even check their mailbox every day! Still, no harm, no foul in the end I guess!

In connection with the trip to Spain, people have been giving us cheques pretty much every month as the club well understands that not everyone has a large pension and can afford to pay for the trip in one go. This is all well and good until I realized, when I was going through my file, that while my own cheque for €500 had indeed been deposited in the club's bank account, as treasurer, I had no official paper trail for that and about seven other cheques, which meant that mine and Monique's figures didn't tally! And that's when I found out that the one Tuesday I hadn't gone to club, someone had deposited cheques at the bank but no-one had thought to give me a copy, so now I'm going to have to go through every cheque deposited for this trip so we don't look like a bunch of eejits when it comes time to give everyone their final statements in June! While I think Monique is very good at her job, given a few things that have happened recently (and from what her son said to me at Christmas) she either hasn't realized (or can't accept) that she isn't the same club president as she was when she last did the job 20 years ago! Don't get me wrong she is doing a good job and is very dynamic, but Martine (the secretary) and I have realized we're going to have to be very careful with everything we do and make sure we each have back-up copies of everything "just in case"!

That being said, Monique and I were chatting after helping with clean up the other week and she started telling me more stories about her late husband. By all accounts - and quite apart from the fact that he was a veritable tom cat - he was a very domineering man who thought his word was law. One time (and she had no idea what made her do this) she had a feeling that something was brewing, so took the gun and ammunition (that he legally possessed) and deposited it in a safe deposit box at the local bank. Well that evening he kicked off and "threatened to do something" - whether he meant to her or to himself she didn't know - and went apeshit when he couldn't find his gun. It's very unusual in France for people to own guns if they're not farmers or hunters, and while she had no idea why she got that gun out of the house, she reckons it probably saved either his or her life - or even both. You never know about other people's lives do you because she's had a heck of a life in many respects and yet to look at her you wouldn't think she was anything other than a gentle Miss Marple-type character!

On Friday the club had a lunch for what I would describe as a kind of old people's tupperware party. Apparently once a year a company will contact them and offer them either a free outing or lunch if participants will sit through a sales spiel - i.e. buy some of their stuff. The young man that set this up told us a bit about what they had on offer (special mattresses, lightweight saucepans for arthritic hands, self-raising lazy boy chairs etc.) but he wasn't the one doing the presentation on Friday. I told them I wouldn't be going as we had the kids' baptism the following day but when I asked how it went they said it was a real wash out. The salesman spent most of his time trying to sell mattresses, a set of five saucepans cost over €500 (???), to which Martine pointed out that most of these people were on their own and why would they need five saucepans anyway? One woman bought what they referred to as a "vaporiser" (cleaner?) for €2,500 and I nearly passed out. I'd want a cleaning service for a decade for that kind of money but when they tried to get him onto the subject of the self-raising chairs he seemed to be in a hurry to get out of there and just skipped over it. So all in all it was a flop, the salesman totally misjudged his target audience and their prices were horrendous. I'm so glad I didn't go "to show support" as there really is no such thing as a free lunch!

On Saturday we had the kids' naming ceremony (rather than a baptism). We're not religious so this was done at the Mairie (the town hall) with the acting Maire doing the ceremony. Basically it was a way to recognize the named godparents, the kids received a gift each from the Maire, and then we all went to lunch, where the restaurant was given totally over to our group. The restaurant was small and with seven kids under seven IT WAS VERY NOISY, but we all had a good time and then walked down to the local park so the kids could run off some of that energy. Charlie and Elynn looked lovely in their new clothes - and then like a bag of sh@t after about 10 minutes playing at the park. Still, that's what it was all about, wasn't it!

With all the blossoms floating around at the moment, my allergies are playing up a treat. I didn't start getting hay fever until I was about 40 and then not every year, but this year, while everything is really pretty, it's been playing hell, with me trying not to sneeze and cough at the same time. I've fished out the trusty oregano oil again and it definitely works (for me at least), so I'm hoping that's about it for this year!

Tomorrow morning they are coming to deliver my heating fuel as I'm nearly out. When I called to (timidly) ask if they'd got any and could I please have more than 100 litres, she laughed and said of course I could have what I want (1,700 litres) so phew - and ouch, when I see that the price is up over 80% compared to this time last year! Still, since I also heat my water with fuel I don't really have a choice do I. I'll just have to grin (through gritted teeth) and bear it!

And finally, I went into town to my lovely Thai lady for a facial today. When I had a coughing fit she asked if it was allergies and I told that yes, I'd been working in the garden. She likes to garden too, and given all the beautiful home-made decorations she makes for her salon, I'm sure her garden looks 1,000 per cent better than mine. So she asked me what I'd been doing and I told her that I'd just seen a Youtube video on how to make dandelion "tea" as a fertilizer. I knew you could make it out of stinging nettles but had never heard of using dandelions. Apparently, the principal is the same as both are full of nitrogen and are extremely beneficial to plants but they both stink to high heaven so it's best to put the bucket well away from your home. So then she told me that her husband had made nettle "tea" (it's called purin in French) but had left the bucket by the kitchen door. When she went to move it she realized the handle was broken and the purin went all over her. He yelled at her for wasting his tea and she yelled back at him because she now smelled like a skunk and had to go to work getting "up close and personal" with her clients! I burst out laughing - as did the lady that was waiting for the appointment after mine! I couldn't imagine having to give someone a facial or a massage while smelling like skunk. I bet she didn't get too many repeat customers that day!

Another busy few days!

I've been offline for a few days this past week as things have been getting really busy again and at times, to be honest, I found it overwhelming (due to lack of sleep, I'm pretty sure). Once I've had a decent night's sleep I'm up and running again but I find I can't bounce back like I used to (old age?). Oddly enough I was heading out to yet another meeting at the old fogies' club on Friday when I bumped into my friend walking her dog and she started on about how overwhelming she was finding everything too. Ok she hasn't been feeling well and that doesn't help but her garden, in particular, seems to be just too much for her right now. Oh she has a new gardener who cuts the hedges and helps with the weeding but I think even just cutting the lawn is now too much for her. I suggested asking her new guy to do that too (money wouldn't be a problem) but we'll see if she goes ahead with that because obviously we're both getting older and if we want to stay in our homes it might just be easier to hire some help for the big stuff!

My own gardener came by today for the first time this year and now everything looks lovely again (he does my lawn and hedges). I don't regret hiring him one bit because while I could probably still, just about, push the lawnmower around my smallish garden, I can't take the heat at all and am more than happy to allow him and his assistant to knock the whole thing out in about 30 minutes. I did get around to putting together my third small cold frame today but screwed it up again when I realised those "weird parts" I seem to have left over from the first two are actually kinda like tent pegs and are meant to be inserted into the frame before you fill it with dirt. Maybe I'll get the hang of this assembly malarky by number six!

With it being Easter there will be no yoga for two weeks and I was looking forward to a little down time, so I was surprised when I looked at my diary on Monday and saw that I had written down "nosewing" and wracked my brain trying to think what the hell that was supposed to be. I was pretty sure I hadn't made plans to get a nose ring (even though I quite like them) but it took me a good few hours to realize that I had actually scrawled "no sewing" as for once our teacher couldn't make it that evening! I really should stop just scrawling things in my diary as I've had a few "nosewing" moments lately!

I finished listening to Cheere Denise read the Oprah book and all I can say is "uuggghhh". While you certainly can't take away from her achievements, she comes over as a horrible narcisst, particularly bearing in mind this book was published in 2010, if I remember correctly, and there have apparently been far worse things to come out about Oprah since then! I also finally finished listening to Mary's Mozaic on Audible. It took me ages as it was a very hard read, but was definitely worth finishing. It's about the apparently random murder of Mary Pinchot Meyer who was a long-time lover and confidante of John F. Kennedy. The book explores the "CIA conspiracy to murder John F. Kennedy, Mary Pinchot Meyer and their vision for world peace". The author, Peter Janney, makes a very convincing argument that the CIA were indeed behind the Mary Pinchot murder (which they tried to pin on some poor sod who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time - luckily he was exonerated) and given that her former, very bitter husband - Cord Meyer - had been pretty high up in the CIA, the book is all the more intriguing, if anyone cares to read it, although I would reiterate that it was hard going!

I went grocery shopping on Friday and just as I was hitting the motorway I noticed massive smoke plumes shooting up into the sky (again) not too far from my usual supermarket. This time it was the recycling plant that had gone up and I think I counted around 15 emergency vehicles, with police blocking off roads and rerouting traffic. The supermarket people must be wondering what the hell they signed up for with two major fires so close by in such a short period of time, but thankfully no-one was injured and again hats off to the emergency services for their sterling work!

Marignier on Friday!

On Wednesday I kept Charlie overnight for the first time and was a bit nervous in case he got upset for his mom in the middle of the night. I decided to have him sleep in my room just in case, but there was no problem at at all. I took him to the park in town for a few hours and then we came home and watched The Lion King and he was pretty tired by the time he went to bed at 9.30 pm. So was I because of being "on" all the time, which was actually made even worse by the fact that he grinds his teeth all bloody night so I didn't get a wink of sleep yet again! 

The park by the library. We never
made it to the library because
he was having so much fun!

I took him home around 4 pm the next day where we were just in time to meet his dad and go pick Elynn up from daycare and then allow both kids to play in the park for an hour. Well Elynn, as it turns out, is a little bruiser and seemingly unafraid of anything, but has also managed to hit the terrible twos at just 18 months (I always knew she was "advanced") because as soon as she gets told no for whatever reason she throws herself on the floor sobbing. She's such a convincing little actress Meryl Streep had better watch out but I had to keep looking away because it's pretty darn funny too (to me at least). I know they all do this and it didn't last long with Charlie, but oh the joys of being able to just hand them back!

We had Easter at my place on Sunday and I overcooked as usual even for eight of us, but then better that than not have enough. I had been thinking about throwing out my old wooden garden table for some time so bought two cheap plastic tables and quickly assembled them during the week to accommodate us all. Only thing is, I had yet again a couple of "spare parts" for each table, and when each table started to sag as we loaded them up with food André realized that I'd put the four reinforcement bars back in the boxes in the garage!! No harm was done but I'm thinking my motto of "if in doubt, throw it out" might not be a good idea for cold frames and garden tables after all!

The "creative hedge" in the background
is the handiwork of Mrs. Gossip's
husband!

The Easter egg hunt is on!

Watering "the harvest"!

I don't remember planting that!

He was determined to drag
all my junk up from the basement
(but guess who bought the junk
in the first place)!

A lovely weekend!

The weather has been very changeable here this past week, but then that's only to be expected in March, I suppose. I'd planned to get so much done before I went away last weekend but the weather obviously had other plans. I did get to pressure spray my back terrace last Monday before the rain set in again, but I managed to get some kind of junk in my eye while doing it so I've had to make an appointment with my eye doctor to get that sorted. It doesn't hurt at all but I reckon a speck of dirt must have gotten in my eye and now it feels like I'm looking through a film with a black dot in the middle. I've tried rinsing it regularly but I reckon I'll have to leave it to the professionals now!

So the weather was good enough for me to at least get that done on Monday but when I kept Charlie on Wednesday all that changed and by the time I left Wednesday evening I was driving through a horrendous snow storm (with a naff eye) and it was really tough! It didn't last long, but long enough to make the drive home hard work and for me to realize yet again how much I hate driving in the snow! And now - well the weather has cleared up enough for me to be working outside getting my garden ready and dragging furniture up from the basement in time for the good weather to come. LIDL were advertising small fibreglass "greenhouses" for €20 so I ordered a few of them online and had them delivered last week. The first one took me four hours to assemble (I know, I know) but to be honest the biggest problem was that unlike IKEA, many of the drill holes don't line up. Still, by the time I'd gotten to number two I'd gotten assembly down to one hour and am hoping I can get the others done in about 30 minutes - a kind of assembly line production, if you will. The big problem, of course, is that they then need filling with soil but I decided to start the first two off with used cardboard followed by garden clippings/compost and then adding the soil because (a) it can get expensive and, more importantly, because (b) lugging bags of soil around at my age is "challenging" to say the least. But I hit pay dirt a couple of days ago when I realized that the new recycling bin in the village is absolutely stuffed full of used cardboard boxes!

I've mentioned before that we haven't had garbage pick-up in the local villages for about 20 years now. They have recycling spots everywhere where you sort your rubbish into household refuse, paper, cardboard and aluminium, and glass. Anything other than that has to be taken to the big recycling centre in town. But about two weeks ago I noticed another container had been added for larger cardboard boxes, you know, the kind you get with large Amazon packages or like the boxes my two new garden tables came in! So there I am fishing out as many large boxes as I can and stuffing them back into my car in order to line the base of my new mini greenhouses. Bingo, less soil for me to lug around (but I do hope they don't have security cameras to see me "stealing" their recycling. I'm pretty sure I'm good though)!

Anyhoo, Friday lunchtime we set off for the Jura mountains for our Christmas present from Jen's mom and partner and in order to celebrate Charlie's fifth birthday. The Jura mountains are shared between France and Switzerland and are to the north of Lake Geneva, whereas the Alps (where I live) are to the south. They're very different too, in that I would call the Jura "brooding" and the Alps "majestic" - that's about the best way I can describe them to be honest. It took us about two hours to get there and the short-term rental turned out to be lovely, so nice in fact that Jen's mom really fell in love with it. It was a 4-bed, 2 1/2 bath prefabricated home on the site of an old barn. Jen's mom moved into an apartment about 4-5 years ago but is not happy there so she's been looking for an all-on-one level home and this place seemed to be exactly what she is looking for. Oddly enough, I saw an article on post-war prefabs in England not so long ago and asked my sister if my memory was correct in that Uncle Bob had lived in one in the early '60s. She confirmed that he had, and that he had loved it. Birmingham was very heavily bombed during WWII so I guess people were just happy to have anywhere to call home at that point!

Post WWII prefab!

This house was of course nothing like the picture above and was indeed so lovely that not only Jen's mom, but also Jordan and Jen said they would be very interested in looking further into prefabs in our area!

The view from our rental. To say it was
"isolated" would be an understatement!

The whole point of being up there was to visit a local polar park, which we promptly did on Saturday morning and were lucky enough to be one of the first groups on the guided tour. Our guide explained to us about the different types of deer/reindeer they had in the park and then went on to tell us the history of the bison that had been bred in captivity throughout Europe. Apparently at one time there were only 50 bison in the whole of Europe but by working with other parks they had managed to get that number up to 10,000 - which was still not enough but, as he said, was a very definite improvement over 50! The little kids were starting to get bored at one point though as what they really wanted to do was play in the snow so Charlie asked him "when we were going to get to see the mamoths" and was most put out when the guide told him never!

The deer will often come over to the visitors
as they are quite tame, but it wasn't our lucky day!

The wolf enclosure!

By the time we were able to get closer to the bison and to pet the deer and goats it had started to snow and since we were already up to our ankles in snow we decided to call it a day!

Saturday was also Charlie's fifth birthday so we staggered presents out over the day and he was one very happy little boy. I'd bought him a magic set and we (or more likely "I") had great fun figuring the different tricks out. The first one was pulling a rabbit out of a hat but I had a helluva time with my sausage fingers fumbling around inside the hat to pull the rabbit out of a hidden pocket, while Elynn found it straight away. After a short while Charlie was producing a flower out of a magic wand and miraculously producing a silk hankerchief from his "empty" hand. It was great fun, so much so that Jen's mom asked if I'd actually bought it for Charlie or for myself (the jury's still out on that one)!

There were a couple of tricks that neither André nor I could figure out for love nor money, but when we handed them over to Jordan he managed to figure them out in a couple of minutes flat. I was telling one of the ladies at sewing club about my theory of "right brain/left brain" and how Jordan could figure out things that had stumped both André and me, and she said they have exactly the same thing in her family. Three of her family are dyslexic (as is Jordan) and they are all extremely creative/artistic but not at all practical. I'm extremely practical but, much to my regret, not in the slightest bit creative or artistic. I have no idea if my/our theory holds water but I'm more and more convinced that the right brain/left brain thing really is "a thing"!

A picture of the church opposite sewing club
as a storm was about to roll in - just
because I love it!