The "kids" waiting to start their walk. 

The French Paradox Walking Club

I "joined" our little village's walking club. That means I show up at the Mayor's office on Thursdays, and join a large group of sept and octigenarians for a strenuous six-eight mile walk up and down steep hills through the French countryside. The Mayor and his girlfriend even joined us for our last walk.

Each week the group travels to a different village, meets a local guide, and then hikes off through the woods, vineyards, and farms, past impressive chateaux, quaint cottages, and old stone sheepherder shelters. These people are in their seventies and eighties and their stamina is UNBELIEVABLE.

Last week, after our walk, we had a three-hour picnic next to a lake . . . after lunch and one glass of wine, I had to take a nap, while the rest of them continued to drink wine and chat. Then, they were all gung-ho to go to an old farm equipment museum.

Most of the walkers complete the walks without drinking any liquids . . . and the days I have been with them it has been really hot.

The older French do not eat or DRINK between meals.
Roger told me he doesn't even take a glass of water between meals.

It has not been the French habit to drink or eat while driving or walking down the street . . . you can always locate me, or other Americans, in the marketplace or on the streets because we're always munching on something. Yesterday, my husband and I finally went out car shopping and noticed that the new cars for sale in France are now crowded with cup holders . . . so our American food consumption habits have infiltrated their cars . . . oh, and all the cars seem to have air conditioning now too, so sadly/happily the romantic era of sweltering French summer travel has been swept into the dust bin of history.

Our local village's walking club . . . the man in the front is 82-years-old, and has had a valve replacement and pacemaker put in . . . the woman on his right is 79. They put me to shame on our hikes. 

Preston with his neices. 

Blanche, enjoying her remaining few days of carefree virginity.
Note: It looks like she's laying in some sort of small cage or enclosure. I just want to clarify that she has a big pasture in which to roam around. However, when she's full and just wants to chew her cud, and it isn't too hot, she enjoys laying in this corner, which is nearest the house.

il fait chaud!

The weather has been extremely hot here. Over 100F. So if we want to get any outside work done, we have to race outside as soon as we get up and work as long as we can stand it. This morning I weeded my rose garden and some other small beds, and trimmed a large hedge.

My husband is chopping down trees and making firewood each day . . . he's been here a week and a half and we have enough wood for about 4 fires! Being self-sufficient is HARD WORK . . . as our Dear Bush-Whacker in Chief would say.

We have a friend who isn't in good health, who relies on firewood for his heat (he also doesn't have any running water but the French government is about to install water, a bathroom, and an elevator for him now . . . talk about great health care). Before my husband started chopping wood, I volunteered that we would chop wood for our friend to get him through the winter. I thought my husband was going to immediately leave me and head back to the U.S. when he found out how much wood our friend uses in the winter . . . I think our friend needs four cords.

But it's too beautiful and peaceful here so my husband isn't too interested in going back to the States . . . so now he's out chopping wood, and I'm stealing a few minutes to post. We're working on ordering a new computer for me so I can blog without having to negotiate for screen time since he needs to have access to the computer for most all of the afternoon and evening . . . you know, to watch the Bourse.

We're about to have a little rash of visitors in the next three weeks, which will be fun . . . I just hope they're prepared to weather the heat with no air conditioning. If it's too much for them, I'll have to put their beds in the Moulin. It's very cool in there because the stone walls are about three feet thick. It's quite posh as it has a brand-new roof. The bats love it in there.

Speaking of animals, I have a snake in my little decorative pond in front of the house. I don't like snakes, but I'm getting used to this one . . .every now and then I catch him with a big tadpole stuck in his craw.

A big lizard ran into the kitchen yesterday and I have no idea where he is now. I don't like reptiles at all, but there are so many lizards crawling around here that I've learned to quit jumping whenever one darts out in front of me.

We have a cute family of ducks out back in our mill pond. This morning when I looked out the window, I caught the cat Sirk, eyeing the pond. I hope he leaves the little ducks alone. I love watching them skoot around on the water turning every which way because they don't really have an agenda to follow.

There's a huge rat-beaver type thing in the mill pond. I saw him surface yesterday and I would say that the experience was on the frightening side . . . akin to seeing the Loch Ness Monster. I was walking through the woods along the canal last week and I heard this HUGE rat-beaver thing jump into the water . . . it sounded like a large human jumping in, the splash was so loud.

Yesterday, we found some interesting feces deposited near our house. It was full of large seeds, like cherry pits. We described our prize find to a neighbor and he said it was a wild boar. There is a huge male boar that I saw last year, right behind our mill, so maybe it's prowling around at night.

If it sounds like a jungle here, it really is with the humidity, the crickets and frogs chirping constantly, hundreds of birds singing, and thousands of bees swarming a large flowering tree near our house.

Our cleaning lady was dropped off this morning by a rather good-looking man. I hope he's good to her and is "a keeper". . . she just went through a divorce and was hurting a lot . . . she maintained her cheerfulness throughout the ordeal, but seems to be exhibiting a much deeper happiness now.

Yesterday we went up to our British neighbors to swim in their gorgeous new pool and had a good time. Note, for all you francophobes: the French are too polite to tell you anything negative about Americans . . . the British aren't! They're fond of pointing out that we're two peoples separated by a common language.

Rose bush from my rose garden . . . which I weeded today. 

Sheep Pedicure

I had called the vet two weeks ago to come out and cut off the tails of my sheep. My friend Colin has me worried that their messy tails will attract blowflies and their offspring, the darling maggots. I have cut the wool off from around Blanche's derriere and she's a much cleaner sheep.

The vet said he'd call me back and schedule a rendez-vous. I never heard from him again. So two days ago, I had Corinne, the woman who works for us, call him. He gave her the same message: he'd call me.

Low and behold, that same afternoon, when it was 95F in the shade and we had just returned from a tiring day at the sweltering Toulouse auto auction, and I had just laid down on the couch for a siesta, the vet called and asked if he could come over. Not the next morning as Corinne had requested, but right now. I said it was fine . . . even though I hung up the phone and moaned to my husband that it would be a most unpleasant experience -- wrestling sheep in extremely hot and humid weather.

I put on my American overalls, my leather gloves, my baseball hat, and grumbingly waited for the vet to arrive. Turns out he's a handsome specimen of a man, and when my single girlfriend Cathi arrives next week, I'll have to think of some other reason for him to visit the sheep. He spoke great English with a debonair French accent.

I held the sheep down while he trimmed their hooves and gave them preventative shots for worms. He told me that there was no reason to cut their tails at this stage in their lives. The procedure would require putting them under anesthesia and he didn't feel it was worth doing.

I asked him if he thought that Blanche was too fat. He replied that she looked healthy. I told him that he gave great manicures. He replied, "I won't put pink on them."

Back by Popular Demand

I've been in France since the first of June. The first two weeks, I didn't have web access. Seems that a huge lightening storm blew out the telephone and computer modem sometime in May.

I called France Telecom to have them send a replacement. I was talking to the service department and having a difficult time getting the woman to speak slowly so that I could understand her. I asked her, in French, if she or anyone in the service department spoke English. She said that no one did. I said that was weird, because when the SALES department called to sell us the DSL service, they spoke perfect English.

I asked her to send the modem as soon as possible because my husband would be arriving in seven days and I absolutely had to have it up and running by then. She said I might get it within ten days! Okay, that's France . . . it's teaching me to give up my demanding ways.

The next day, I answered the ringing telephone and there was a woman from France Telecom speaking perfect English asking me if I wanted to subscribe to their DSL service. I was alarmed that maybe the connection had somehow been cut off. I said that as far as I knew, we had DSL service, I was just waiting for her company to send me the new modem. She said, "Oh, I just have this message on my desk to call you."

I asked, "Can you check to see if we're signed up for the service and if the modem has been mailed out?"

She said, "I can't today. My computer isn't working!"

Soixante-Douze and Blanche 

My cute niece with my mother's dog, Etta Mae.