So Much for Abstinence Programs

I've reached a new milestone in my life. Unprodded, I told the Progeny that he and his girlfriend can share a bedroom when they're here this summer.

Progressive mother that I am, I just hope I don't hear any, shall we say, disturbing noises coming out of that room.

I have a funny feeling that hearing your kid have sex is like hearing your parents have sex. I've never experienced either event, but I reckon that the sensation is similar to hearing someone scrape their fingernails across a blackboard while you're in the middle of vomiting into a toilet.

The French Dentist

I went to the dentist to have my teeth cleaned. I had gone to his office a week earlier to make the appointment. He doesn’t have an assistant. I entered his waiting area. Rang the buzzer. He came out and I made an appointment with him. I wanted to make a second appointment for the Husband, but he told me that I could make that when I came in for my appointment.

When I showed up for my appointment, the dentist asked me why I had come in, and I replied that I was there to have my teeth cleaned. I got in the chair. He asked me to remove my lipstick. He peered into my mouth. Then he said he didn’t understand why I wanted my teeth cleaned.

I told him that I get my teeth cleaned twice a year. He gave a slight shrug as if to say, okay lady, if you want to waste your money.

He asked me if I used an electric toothbrush. I said I did. He said he could tell because my teeth were evenly cleaned. He added that it looked as if I flossed regularly. Yes, but not every day I admitted. He told me again that I really didn’t need my teeth cleaned.

I don’t have the whitest, brightest smile. I drink a lot of tea and so my teeth resemble those of a British person who’s had good American orthodontia. But I guess that by French standards I have fantastic teeth. Add another reason to my long list of why I love this country.

I paid the dentist’s 20 Euro bill. I made an appointment for the Husband and tried to make one for the twenty-year-old Progeny. No, the dentist replied, your husband can make the appointment for your son. (I haven’t been able to figure out why the dentist won’t give out more than one appointment at a time.)

I asked the dentist if he could whiten my teeth. He said he could whiten them, but it would just be a minor improvement, which leads me to believe that he doesn't have the extreme whitening capabilities of American dentists. I inquired if he had an appointment available within the next few days. No he didn’t. I didn’t make the appointment. I’m leaving for the Cannes Film Festival on Friday, and wanted to get my teeth whitened. There’s no reason to get my teeth whitened after I return. I’ll have the dingiest teeth at the Festival, but here in my rural department, I get the feeling that I possess the best set of adult teeth my dentist has ever seen.

The Husband and I had a wonderful lunch at a new restaurant in the village. It’s owned by a pair of twins. They inherited their parents’ dry goods store and turned it into an upscale women’s boutique. Each August, they stage a fashion show in the town square with professional models from Paris, pulsating music, and outrageously expensive designer clothes. I don’t have any clue who buys these clothes. I find them too expensive for my “wasteful American” budget and I never see the locals wearing their offerings. But according to my accountant, the store is wildly successful.

Last summer, the twins enlarged their home furnishing store and added a restaurant to it. The food is very reasonably priced, not gourmet but very good, and creatively presented. The restaurant is based on an odd concept: you eat in the store on furniture that’s for sale surrounded by decorations that are for sale. I found it a bit disconcerting to have a price tag attached to my armrest, scratching my arm while I ate.

After lunch, I checked the sheep then took the dogs for a three-hour walk. We walked through a very pretty village that has remained quaint and “primitive.” I’ve been told that it’s been totally overtaken by the Dutch. However, I won’t fault the clog-wearing, tulip-growing, foreigners on their renovations for they seem to have successfully maintained the original character of the village. I was mildly disturbed by one very new rambling modern monstrosity on the outskirts of town, and one house in town that had recently been raped with the insertion of double-paned, plastic-framed windows.

The Husband and I have had an on going “discussion” regarding modern windows. First he wanted to install screens on the windows to keep out the flies, bats, and bugs. I argued that screens were not a part of the native architecture and that I didn’t want them on our house. Besides, we lived in the country and we needed to enjoy being one with nature – even while sleeping.

The Husband seems to have given up on the screen idea in favor of a hideous, more diabolical goal. He wants to replace our original windows with insulated, double-paned abominations. Every now and then, a window salesman drives up the lane and I chase him off. However, I live in perpetual fear that one day I'll be in the villiage, the Husband will be alone, vulnerable, ripe pickings for the window salesman who will drive up and seduce him with falsities of energy savings. The Husband will succumb, take his pen in hand, and sign an order for new windows.

Well, don’t have time to write more as I must make my way to the Mairie to submit my papers for my carte de sejour.

Vines, Voleurs, and Vaginas

Took a 2.5 hour walk yesterday with the dogs. We returned via the woods behind Roger’s house. He was in his now-barren vineyard loading up vine stumps onto a trailer hooked to his tractor. The Husband had suggested to me the other day that I should ask Roger if he wanted to give away those vine stumps. But I wasn’t going to do that because I figured that Roger would burn them himself in his wood stove.

I walked over to say “bonjour” to Roger and to ask him what he was doing. I don’t recommend that one walk up to a French person and ask, “Whatcha doin’?” It’s not polite. However, Roger is familiar with my strange American ways; and since he’s a bachelor and doesn’t have someone bugging him all day, he enjoys my nosiness.

Roger told me that the government agency that oversees agricultural matters had notified him that he had to move his pile of vine stumps to a covered location. They’re worried the stumps might be infected with some grape disease and the wind would blow the disease to other vineyards.

It doesn’t matter that Roger’s vines were disease-free for fifty years. It doesn’t matter that the nearest vineyard is on the other side of a small mountain. They insisted that he move the stumps.

Roger said to me, “I told them, I’m French and I can’t even understand why you would insist on such a crazy regulation.” I had a hearty laugh at that.

Roger has three vineyards worth of vine stumps. He told me that the Husband and I could take as many stumps as we wanted, and he’d even drive them over on his tractor. I told him that at the very least, we’d help him load them onto the trailer.

I asked Roger if he knew anything about the thief for whom the Gendarmes were searching. He told me that someone had robbed his cousin Perrot’s cave. They stole cases of wine and lots of homemade pate. The Gourmet Thief strikes again! The Husband ran out to check our cave and happily found everything in tact. It’s not stocked with delicious homemade pates that I’ve made; however it does have a robust collection of wine that the Husband has put together. I have to admit that I’m not holding up my end of the cave stocking duties.

Still no new lambs. During the day, I try to walk out every hour, and if I’m away, the Husband assumes Twat Watch duty for me. The Husband and I have developed the ovine version of The Vagina Monologues.

“See anything interesting?” the Husband asks as I return from my check.

“Nope. Everything seems tight as a drum,” I reply.

There’s something a bit perverted about making your sheep stand up every hour so you can examine their genitals. But I guess it’s in my genes for my Father and my brother Bill are doing the exact same exercise with their cows.

Until I get a healthy lamb, I’m going to be possessed by this constant foreboding dread when I walk out towards the sheep pasture. Checking on the sheep used to be a pleasurable experience. But now I’m very tense. I’m frightened of scanning the pasture and spotting another dead white blob of a lamb. This morning the thought struck me that I’m on some sort of sick Easter egg hunt.

On a happy note, the roses bushes are beginning to bloom.

The Rat of the Baskervilles

For several days, the Husband had been complaining about the kitchen smelling badly. Our furniture and household goods from the States had recently arrived, and we were now using our gigantic American trashcan in the kitchen. So I just assumed it was the massive amount of garbage that had accumulated. I wrapped it up and we took it to the trash collection site on the way to the Sunday market.

We returned home later that day and the Husband mentioned the smell again. I dismissed the acrid scent by suggesting that it might be coming from the fish we had purchased at the market and had left in the car while we were eating lunch at our friends’ house. The Husband must have accepted that explanation for he didn’t demand further inquiry.

Monday morning I woke up, plodded down the stairs, entered the kitchen and was overpowered by one hell of a stink. I made my pot of tea and left the room as quickly as possible.

The Husband woke up, plodded down the stairs, and before he could make his way to the kitchen, I informed him that the air in the kitchen was quite difficult to breathe without vomiting.

I remained at my post in the living room; sipping my morning tea, enjoying the sunrise, and listening to the birds serenade me. The Husband intrepidly entered the kitchen, and was heard to let out a scream, albeit a masculine scream.

The rest of the tale, I did not witness. I gathered the details from the Husband. He had discovered something horrid under the sink and I had no desire to sully my beautiful mind with the sight of something so hideous that it would make the Husband scream.

As my loyal readers will remember, in February, my bananas were disappearing each night and I suspected a giant monkey was living under the kitchen sink in a decrepit cave-like cupboard that I never, ever open. NEVER. The interior of the cupboard is dark, wet and cold. There is a hole dug into the ground, towards the back of the cupboard, and it is through this hole that the water from the sink drains. To me, opening the cupboard is akin to opening the gates to Hell . . . there’s no telling what evil is lurking there.

The Husband did open the cupboard of horrors yesterday and just as I suspected, found something evil: a giant, bloated, maggot-infested rat that at first glance, appeared to be alive since it was standing up, its body pressed up against the cupboard door. So when the Husband opened the cupboard, he thought the giant rat was directly in his face, ready to pounce.

The Husband kept calling me to come into the kitchen to see the rat. I refused. I still can’t get the vision of the beautiful dead lamb out of my head. I certainly didn’t want it replaced by an ugly putrefying rat.

When I was staying here alone, I learned to live in harmony with the rat. When I went to the States for six weeks, the Husband didn’t enjoy being forced to hide his bananas each night so he put out rat poison.

You’ll recall last week’s episode involving the dead lamb. The Husband wrapped the lamb in multiple American-sized garbage bags. When he had returned from disposing of the lamb, he said to me, “I hope there’s not a law against disposing of dead animals in the trash containers.”

“Oh,” I replied, “I don’t think they care about small animals. I threw that headless rabbit in two years ago.”

“Well, I’m a bit worried,” he continued. “The trash men drove up just as I was throwing in the bag.”

The French are pretty forgiving of their criminals so I assured him that I didn’t think he had anything to worry about. However, should he have to go to the Maison Grande for a while, I promised that the dogs and I would faithfully wait for his return.

Yesterday on the anniversary of the end of World War II, around three in the afternoon, two Gendarmes pulled into the driveway. I thought, the French don't spare any expense for their celebrations, and here they've hired actors to re-enact the deportation of Jews for the holiday festivities. What a dramatic way in which to bring back the sights, sounds and sensations of the war.

The Husband was involved in his favorite pastime, fixing the computer, and asked me to answer the door.

I have to admit, I’m not a good wife. It wasn't my natural instinct to hide the Husband in a dank cupboard, we have several, and then go lie to the Gendarmes that the Husband had fled to the States. Sadly, the thought crossed my mind that, if they take the Husband away for a few months, I can decorate the house the way I want, without any negotiation about where to hang the paintings or place the furniture. I’m always surprised at the ways in which Providence provides me with what I want.

I replied, “No you go to the door. It’s the Gendarmes, it’s better if a man talks to them.”

The Husband sighed and somberly walked to meet his fate.

Turns out the Gendarmes wanted to know if we had seen any robbers.

“Ah hah!” the Husband exclaimed while the giant rat lay tightly bound and putrefying not ten feet away from where he stood. “A robber running around? That would explain why we’re missing a lamb.”

My Ghost Story

Okay WhatTheH, here’s the ghost story I promised you:

When I was a kid back on the farm in Ohio, between the ages of six and nine, I used to have a recurring nightmare. It was always set during the night. I was frantically running from neighboring farm to neighboring farm, knocking on the door of the farmhouse. The door would open. I would hurriedly and breathlessly explain that something terrible had happened to my family. I would ask the neighbors if they could help me, but they would never answer. They would close the door in my face, and I would race off to another farmhouse.

For several years the nightmare would frequently make its appearance and it never had a resolution. I always woke up from that nightmare in a panic.

Thirty years later, I was visiting my parents in Montana. My father was telling me that he believes in ghosts. I thought this was a bit odd because my father’s an educated man of science. He has a master’s degree in electrical engineering.

He told me that when we lived on that farm in Ohio, he used to be awakened at night by a furious pounding on the front door. He would get up, often with his rifle, and investigate.

He said there was never anyone at the door.
He said this phenomenon continued for several years.

I was overcome with chills when he told me this.

“I think it was that girl and boy whose family was massacred by the Indians [1802 it turns out],” he matter-of-factly said.

“But we aren’t near their place,” I replied.

“Yes we are.” After a brief pause he explained, “Back then, there were hardly any farms here, the farms were bigger, the town didn’t exist, and the roads as we know them were different. I bet that if you measured the distance from our farmhouse to their farmhouse, as the crow flies it can’t be more than a mile. And who knows, the property lines of our farm could have been connected then.”

So there’s my ghost story. Corroborated by my own, and my father’s experiences.

The Socialist Emergency Room

Friday night at dinner, my American friend Kathleen noticed that one of my knuckles was deeply bruised. When I glanced at my hand to see what she was talking about, I was surprised to see that my knuckle was a deep hue of purple. Kathleen and my husband, Craig expressed their concern over the injury. The bruise didn’t bother me because neither the knuckle nor the finger hurt. Kathleen’s husband didn’t get involved with the diagnosis.

Upon waking the next morning, Craig wanted to look at the affected finger and was shocked to see that the discoloration had taken over the entire finger. Still, it didn’t hurt unless I applied pressure to the finger. I was able move the finger without any discomfort.

Thinking I had some hideous disease that was eating away at my body (Ebola or leprosy I’m sure crossed his mind) Craig insisted I call a doctor. The first doctor answered his own phone, but told me that he wasn’t seeing patients that day. The other GP in town only had an answering machine to which I could relate my troubles.

Craig decided that I must go into the big town to the emergency room at the hospital. The purple was spreading and he didn’t relish the idea of running errands with me looking like Barney the Dinosaur.

We loaded ourselves into the car just as the church bells were striking the lunch hour, and that made both of us wonder out loud whether emergency rooms in France are open from noon to three.

They are.

However, upon arrival, there was no one manning the reception desk so we had to ring for service. Waited for a response. Described the problem. The nurse buzzed us in. Then we waited for the nurse to appear to make a triage assessment.

After a brief wait, the pert nurse, with short cropped hair, beaming a big smile, came out to look at my finger. She asked me a few questions about how the finger was injured. (I didn’t have a clue.) She told me to take a seat and they’d get to me when they were free.

I sat down and Craig and I debated whether the nurse had told me that my problem was “pas grave” or “grave.” The first interpretation meant that we were idiots for coming to the emergency room. The second meant that Craig might be cashing in my life insurance policy soon.

There was a sign on the wall outlining what patients could expect from the hospital. You American readers will get a hoot out of this one: Everyone can expect to have access to the best care our facility can provide regardless of your financial situation!

There was a sign posted at the vacant receptionist desk that warned me that my waiting time would be determined by the severity of my injury, not by my status on the waiting list. So the fact that I had skipped lunch to be at the head of the line meant nothing. Some selfish stroke victim would be allowed to cut in front of me after they had partaken of a hearty lunch.

When we arrived, my husband and I were the only ones sitting in the waiting room. However, ambulances kept sneaking in and dropping off patients who had no intention of wasting their time standing in line for care.

Three hours later, the nurse came to get me and took me back to the examining rooms.

Leaving the quiet waiting room, where I had now been joined by a crying family, and an impatient woman who had fractured her wrist, I entered a long, wide, and very busy hallway flanked by examining rooms on each side. The facility was immaculately clean; state of the art; and buzzing with doctors and nurses. I’ve been admitted to several emergency rooms in the U.S. and I am reporting to you that this small town hospital surpassed the ones I had previously seen in cleanliness and modernity.

The nurse examined me again, and then told me a doctor would come to see me. While I waited, I assessed the victims that were being wheeled before me and they ran the gamut from heat attack victim, horse riding accident, motorcycle accident, old age, broken arm, and one broken ankle.

The staff was extremely cheerful, and even the patients who were in pain couldn’t help but smile back. I felt as if I was in some Twilight Zone episode which revealed a strange country that had very clean modern hospitals, free health care, and extremely solicitous staff.

The female doctor told me that nothing much was wrong with me. Perhaps I had been bitten by a spider. Since I had the full range of movement in the finger, and it didn’t hurt, she wasn’t going to do anything. She said the discoloration might spread; but that I was not to worry unless it went past my wrist. Then I should return to the hospital. I should also return if a fever developed in my hand. She smiled kindly throughout the consultation.

Oh, I almost forgot. I didn’t have to fill out one form. The nurse wrote my address down on a sticky note!

Clean, modern hospitals; friendly staff; free healthcare for citizens (cheap for foreigners); no paperwork . . . God I hate socialized medicine!

Sunday Morning

Can’t tell you how good it is to hear the cock crowing outside the window right now. I forgot to shut the chickens in their coop last night before we went out to dinner. I guess the foxes were off celebrating their May 8th weekend.

We’ve had two, three-day weekends in a row: this weekend, the celebration centers around May 8th which is the official date for the end of World War II in France.

Reluctantly, at six this morning, I left my husband sleeping soundly in our cozy new, California King, McClosky’s mattress to go check the sheep. We had a soaking rain last night, so the air was wispy with light fog and heavy with humidity. Thousands of birds were singing. I saw the black cat stalking around a tree. The sheep were perfectly content, making their grazing rounds. No one appeared to be in any stage of labor.

It’s difficult to get out of a cozy bed early on a Sunday morning. But once I get outside, I’m so happy. All I hear is nature: the chickens, the birds, the ducks, the dogs, the sheep. The omnipresent gasoline-powered engine is gone, and for a few brief hours I’m really in paradise.

If the sheep are up and walking/grazing when I go to check on them I don’t have to enter the pasture. It’s pretty obvious then that no one is giving birth. But if any of them are lying down, I am obliged to trudge back through the tall, damp grass to see if anyone is trying to push out a lamb.

On two separate occasions yesterday, I saw a sheep stretched out as if she was in labor. In fact, this sheep was so stretched out, I didn’t think she was living. Sheep usually lay with their legs curled under their bodies. Both times I witnessed this sight, the sheep were naturally, in the farthest corner of the pasture so I had to slosh out a good distance to see what was going on. One time, I was dressed in my town clothes.

Amazingly the sheep that seemed to be dead or in labor was Beau, the buck! I would find him stretched out next to his favorite concubine, Blanche. The two of them are always together now. I should just spray paint him and the other sheep that had the dead lamb. Then, if they’re seen prone on the ground, I don’t have to go check their behinds.

The Spring Lamb

My mother claims that she descends from a long line of Hungarian gypsies who are psychic. Most Americans I know who are of European descent like to regale their children and patient acquaintances with tales of noble blood running through their veins. But my family doesn’t nurture aristocratic rumors. On my mother’s side we’re gypsies and mercenaries. On my father’s side we’re bootleggers.

I often get premonitions. But I never understand they are premonitions until after the fact – when it’s too late to do anything about the impending future event – usually a disaster of some mild magnitude. During my recent visit with my mother, she insisted I look through her mother’s fortune telling manual. I did. But I didn’t find any useful information on how to profit from my premonitions.

Lately, I’ve been painfully psychic. The latest event happened this morning as I was sitting in a comfortable leather armchair, chatting with my husband over his cup of coffee and my cup of tea.

I glanced out the window, and in the sheep pasture, I saw something white and large enough that I thought it was a baby lamb. The apparition kept walking in and out of the bushes so I would only get inadequate glimpses of it. After several sightings, I finally said to Craig, “That looks like a baby lamb out there.”

He got up but couldn’t see anything. He sat down. The white thing appeared again, and I realized it must be the long-lost cat Cirq, who Craig and I rarely see any more.

About an hour later, when Craig and I had finished talking, I was in the kitchen and heard a sheep bleating. I thought it odd, because usually, the sheep only bleat if they can see me, if they’re within viewing distance of the house. But I couldn’t see any sheep.

I took off my fluffy pink slippers and slipped on my raspberry-colored, rubber garden clogs and went outside to see what was up with the sheep. When I came around the corner, I could see in the distance, a white blob in the field. At first I thought it was a lamb. Then I thought it was a grouping of white flowered weeds that grow throughout the pasture. As I got closer I was sure it was a dead rabbit.

The bleating sheep was far away from the white blob. She was alone. The rest of the flock was merrily munching their way through the pasture.

As I got closer to the white blob, I kept thinking that it was odd for a dead rabbit to be in the pasture, for if a predator killed a rabbit, surely it would have dragged the carcass off to be eaten.

To my horror, I discovered that the blob was a dead lamb.

It had probably been born within the hour, because it wasn’t stiff yet. The blood hadn’t congealed, and the afterbirth was still glistening in the morning sun.

I felt sick to my stomach.

The first-time mother had cleaned off the lamb’s face, and licked the mucus off of its body. She had done everything right, but the large, healthy looking lamb was undeniably dead. It's sad mother was walking around with a swollen udder, approaching me as if to ask for help.

I turned the lamb over to see if it had been attacked by a dog. But it hadn’t.

I went back to the house, and got Craig to pick up the lamb and put it in a garbage bag.

Just yesterday, Therese brought over her brother, a retired sheep farmer, to look at the sheep and tell me if they were pregnant. He told me he couldn’t tell.

Where are All Those Uppity French?

I forgot to tell you about this amusing vignette from dinner last night.

The British couple told us that they are amazed at how friendly all the French people they've met here have been to them. They've owned a cottage in Wales for the past twenty years, which they just sold because they didn't like the development that was going up in the field next to them.

They said that in all those twenty years, they found their Welsh neighbors, and fellow countrymen to be very unfriendly.

The British wife said that she was talking to a French nurse and asked the woman if it bothered her that the foreigners were buying up all the houses and land. The woman cheerfully replied, "Not at all. They are protecting our patrimony by fixing up the houses."

The Bureaucracy, part deux

Late yesterday afternoon, I developed an intestinal bug. I didn’t feel badly, I just couldn’t stray too far away from a toilet.

Craig and I were invited to dinner at our new British neighbors at 7:30. As the appointed dinner hour approached, I rallied myself to attend. I reasoned that after all the matter that had coursed out of my system, there couldn’t be anything left to expel.

However, upon arrival at the Brits, I found that I needed to visit the restroom every half hour. But what was worse than that was that my body started to ache, and I developed a horrible headache as I sat at the dinner table.

When the Brit wife had called to invite us for dinner she had left a message saying that she found us “intriguing, entertaining, and enriching.” Unfortunately, due to my unruly intestinal tract, I wasn’t able to follow up my earlier entertaining performance. The Brit wife would probably now describe me as sullen, dull, and vacant.

I spent the night in fitful sleep. At first I was wracked with chills then as the night matured, I became slightly feverish.

Around 10:30 am, I still hadn’t gotten out of bed. I heard Craig outside our open bedroom window telling our neighbor Francine that I was sick and still sleeping. After she left, Craig called up to the window to tell me that Francine’s visit reminded him that I needed to get to the mayor’s office today with my long-stay visa documentation. From my arrival in France, I have eight days to file the necessary paperwork with the mayor. His office is only open on Mondays and Thursdays. I missed Monday because it was a national holiday. I had to go today.

I roused myself from my sickbed; took a shower; and dressed myself presentably for a visit to the mayor. I needed three passport photos, so Craig drove me into the village to the grocery store that has the photo machine. The machine was being repaired. When I asked the man how many minutes it would be, he replied, “Une heure.” Well, I’d have to go without the photos since the mayor’s office closed in one hour.

Craig drove me to the mayor’s office. There were no cars parked outside. I got out to read the sign posted on the door. The mayor’s office was closed all this week and would also be closed next Monday for the anniversary of the end of World War II.

I have to hope that the Mayor isn’t a stickler for the letter of the law. By the time I can see him in his office; it will have been fifteen days since my arrival in France . . . not eight.

Spring Flowers

The dogs kept us awake all night barking at wildlife in the woods.

I was so tired when I woke up that I didn’t think I would be able to lift a tea cup to my lips. Surprisingly, I found a burst of energy and ended up spending the morning, and part of the afternoon, working on my stone fence, pulling weeds and planting flowers.

Around 11am Craig and I drove into the village, where Craig dropped off the flat tire for the riding lawn mower. Both of our mowers are out of commission. Hopefully one will be fixed soon. In case they aren’t, we’re keeping machetes in the house in order to hack our way out to civilization.

The walnut trees are blossoming, along with the chestnuts, lilacs, and irises. Looking out the kitchen window at our park, I see a giant, living, Monet canvas.

We also went to the local nursery today and purchased enough geraniums, hibiscus, and double impatiens to finish planting the pots that line our terrace. Craig had made a good start with the planting while I was gone, but suffered a setback when a frost hit.

The road between our village and the greenhouse is undergoing construction. It appears that they’re redoing the road to make it easier for more large box stores to sink their tentacles into the unsuspecting earth. The sight made me very unhappy; and so I took us on a different, more idyllic way home from the nursery.

Consumed with regret for the views that were destroyed by the construction, I wondered how long it will take before there are no idyllic ways left to drive home.

Kafka Meets the Surrealists

What a day!

This morning, Craig and I drove into our main town so that I could register with the Prefecture in order to obtain my official long-stay visa . . . the consulate in San Francisco just issues a temporary visa.

After receiving the necessary documents which I am to fill out and take to the mayor’s office tomorrow, Craig went to talk with the office that deals with drivers’ licenses.

We have Florida drivers’ licenses which the French government will exchange for a French license.

However, since we just got them at the beginning of this year, and there is no indication on the license of how many years we have been driving, to the French registrar, it appears as if we are novice drivers.

She’s willing to issue us a novice driving permit, which means we would have to drive around with a big “A” on our car, we would have to drive accompanied by a licensed French driver, and we would have to pay to take driving lessons. Not a very pleasant scenario.

The registrar told us that if we provide some sort of official government documentation of our driving record, then she would issue the license.

Problem is, that previous record would have to be obtained from California, and France won’t consider any driving records or drivers’ licenses from California! So we’re thrown in this license limbo because California won’t accept a French license as valid . . . and vice-versa.

There were four registrars in the office. The first, didn’t know what to do. She felt that she couldn’t bend the rules but she sympathized with the frustrating position in which we found ourselves.

A second registrar told the first one to just go ahead and give us the licenses. Registrar number one agreed with that reasoning and was on the verge of doing that; but then, registrar number three chimed in that it couldn’t be done.

We concluded the matter for the time being when registrar number one wrote down the name and number of the director, who was on vacation for a week. We are to call Madame le Chef next week to see what she suggests we do to escape our Kafkaesque plight.

This afternoon was warm and sunny and so I gathered together my beach towels to go lay in the park and take a nap with the dogs . . . I would have gone out with the sheep, but they have too many flies hovering in their vicinity.
The two dogs fought over my attentions. I covered my head with a beach towel because their fight kept crossing over my body. At one point I peeked out from under the towel, and was struck by the strange sight of the rooster, his head and chest jutting out from behind a large tree on an incline above where I lay. The dogs were fighting in front of me; Attila had Antoinette’s head in his mouth. I laughed at the surrealist tableau that was presenting itself to me and marveled at the wonderfully strange life that I lead.

In the late afternoon, I drove into our village to do some grocery shopping. I had sole on my menu, but my plans where dashed when I found the fish monger’s shop closed – he had posted a note stating that there were no fish today. I drove to the supermarket and they didn’t have any fish. I guess there was no fish today because yesterday was a holiday and that disrupted the fish distribution system.

So, discarding my Mayo Clinic healthy cornmeal encrusted sole for the evening, I walked to the butcher’s. I asked him to cut me off a large steak suitable for barbequing. I asked him if he was interested in buying my lambs.

He said he would be very happy to buy my lambs.

I asked him when he wanted me to call him. He replied that I should call before the lambs are four months old. I said I thought that I would be calling him in September.

He said, “Are the sheep pregnant?”

I said, “I don’t know.”

He asked, “Do you have a buck?”

He must have thought I was an absolute idiot.

Lamb consumption is quite high in France. That’s because they eat very tender lamb. In the U.S. the consumer eats lamb that’s over a year old and that’s been fattened in a feed lot. The resulting meat would be mutton to a Frenchman, and they’d have to be starving to eat it. The French prefer their lamb to be taken right off the mother, at the tender, unbelievably cute age of 3-4 months.

Emotionally, I don’t see how I’ll be able to sell my lambs. I don’t even eat lamb. But the agreement with Craig is that the sheep have to finance themselves. And wool doesn’t bring in any money. On sale day, I’ll leave the farm and Craig can deal with the butcher when he comes to take the male lambs away.

Merci, WhattheH

Thanks for writing your comment regarding your daughter's allergies.

The thought never crossed my mind that my guests might be vegetarians because they were allergic to meat products.

For future dinner parties, I'll be more conscientous. (I'm just as guilty as that corporate whore, McDonald's. They settled a law suit a few years back brought by vegetarians and Hindus over the fact that they touted their fries as vegetarian, when in reality, the grease they were fried in contained animal products.)

Springtime in France

Happy May 1st! All of France is shut down. Today is their "Labor Day."

Craig planted a garden while I was in the U.S. I was very impressed with the quantity and variety of plants. Most people say they'll plant a garden but never get around to it. But Craig went above and beyond the call of duty.

When he was a kid in Southern California he enjoyed planting things . . .one time even planting "bacon seeds" from the frying pan, thinking he'd grow bacon. Which was a brilliant idea . . . bacon from seeds planted in the ground. Vegetarian bacon.

I could have used some vegetarian bacon yesterday. Our vegetarian friends were coming over for dinner. Early in the morning, I concocted a vegetable soup. In the morning, Craig went to the outdoor market, but on his way home he forgot to pick up vegetable stock at the grocery store, which was only open in the morning.

After eight hours of simmering, my chef angst heightened to an uncomfortably stressed level: the broth was still weak and tasteless. I had Craig sample the soup, and he confirmed my fears.

I added more garlic. I added more pepper. I added some more herbs. But nothing did the trick.

At dinner, everyone raved about the soup. After the guests had left, when we got into bed at 12:30am, Craig said to me, "That soup turned out pretty good, what did you do to it?"

In the dark, I smiled and replied, "I threw two chicken bouillon cubes in it."

"You're evil," he exclaimed.

This morning, Craig looked out the kitchen window and marveled at how fast his lettuce was growing. Based on experience, we've found that it's best not to comment on good fortune. So now I'm worried that the sheep will escape and devour the lettuce, or the garden will soon be hit by a horde of rabbits.

All of the sheep are now fat like Blanche. I can't tell if anyone is knocked-up. The big sheep farmers have their sheep sonogrammed, but I'm having a hard enough time getting a shearer out here, I don't want to bother trying to track down someone to sonogram.

I look at the sheep each morning hoping to see a little lamb running around. I'll post photos when that great day arrives.