I don't blog when I annoy myself

So I've been sort of tired of living in my own head for the last few months. I complain too much and I'm generally pretty boring. I feel like I lack creativity and any sort of drive for anything in life. Depression? Maybe. But I think it's really that my alter ego is a really boring person, and when I'm trapped with normal me for extended periods of time, I irritate myself.

The house is coming along. And by coming along, I mean we haven't done anything to it other than rewire, and that wasn't even done by us. I have big plans, though! So I guess I don't lack in the ideas department. It's just the execution that needs work.

In front of some rocks in Wiltshire.....

We bought the ugliest kitchen cabinets. They're really, really ugly. I don't have a picture of them. I will soon. Before I transform them, I promise. I've promised M I will make an effort to finish the projects I start, which totally won't happen, but I have really good intentions. And I don't want half-finished kitchen cabinets. I'll just hold off on my desire to achieve ultimate laziness for another project.

Let's go back to these cabinets, though. I answered an ad on a local English (English language, English people...it's all the same here) website. The full kitchen was about €50. I didn't really care what condition it was in for that price. The only thing that would have been better is free. So early one Monday morning, M and I went to pick up these new cabinets.

When we left, the fountain in front of our house looked like this:


In other words, it was colder than should be legally allowed. (This is really amusing in light of what we had to deal with a few weeks later, but that's another story.) The lady of the house (I don't know what to call her) asked if I wanted to come inside where it was warm while the menfolk loaded the cabinets. I'm a cherry-picking feminist, so you can guess which option I chose. She ushered me inside where a hyperactive border collie was waiting to attack my face and upper body. And she didn't put the dog outside. I like dogs. Don't get me wrong. But I hate petting them or getting licked by them, because then my hands smell, and I become obsessed with the idea that I can feel dirt on my hands.

The room looked like it would make a great candidate for Hoarders. I'm used to a decreased standard of cleanliness at this point, but this was crazy. Old electronics, boxes upon boxes of old papers, musty, torn carpets, desks in every corner....


I sat on the couch closest to the wood-burning stove. The lady perched herself on the arm of the couch perpendicular to me and stared. She started asking me questions. They were mostly harmless, general questions. We made small talk. It was really a pretty normal level of awkwardness. She seemed pretty interested in me. And that's also normal. I chalk that up to not actually being interesting, but rather, to looking about 10 years younger than I am and having fairly insane stories. I'm pretty sure most people think I'm a pathological liar.

I always feel like I dominate conversations. When I get nervous, I talk. A lot. So I turned the tables and asked how long they had been here. She responded that her partner had been here for about 8 years, but she had only lived here for 3. I asked if they had met in France then. She said no, they had met in Spain, where she had been living.

"That's nice," I said. "Was he on holiday?" (I also have a lovely knack for saying really stupid things.)

"Yes," she said. "We met through mutual friends. I was still married to my husband at the time."

"Oh. Ohhh...." Yeeeeah. So. Not really sure how to follow up on that one. Thankfully, she did it for me.

Pre-much-needed hair cut

"I lived in Spain for two years and it was miserable. I met D while he was on holiday there, left my husband of 22 years and moved here. We've been here ever since. I like it a lot, but I don't have insurance here since I don't work, and seeing doctors costs a lot of money. I've been ill with glandular fever since October, and I was finally getting better when we had guests over for the holidays. Guests are such hard work, you know. It was exhausting. They're always wanting things, and you have to keep the house so proper while they're here. You can't ever really relax. And now I'm feeling ill again." It was like the TMI floodgates had been opened. I was mental checking myself to Google glandular fever when I got home to make sure it wasn't contagious. I have this thing with infectious diseases. <---- understatement of the year

"That's too bad," I said. "I'm sorry you were ill. How many guests did you have?"

"Two," she said, and was thinking....two?! The way she was carrying on, I thought she'd had twelve.

"So..." At this point, I was grasping for conversation. And I'm naturally nosy. So yes, I went there. "Was your husband Spanish, then?"

"Yes," she said. "He still lives in Spain with our daughter."

She's only 4, and she's already getting birthday drinks from Frenchies.

"Are you fluent in Spanish? That must be helpful with French," I said.

"No," she replied. "My husband is a bit of a misogynist, and he believed a woman's place was in the house. I think he was a bit put off by how much Spanish I managed to learn while we were there."

At this point, the dog, who had been jumping from couch to couch and whining constantly, decided to use my face as a water bowl again. I was just about to stand up and say I should check on the cabinet-loading progress when she said, "Do you have many friends in Confolens?"

"Actually, yes, for only being there a few months, we've got quite a few already. It's really nice."

"Oh," she said. "We don't have any friends out here. It's so hard to meet people."

"I'm sorry," I said, because I really didn't know what else to say. It was quiet for a moment and I was ready to make my escape. I started to move my legs in that "I'm getting up now" way, which when she started talking again just made me look stupid like I was having some sort of body spasm.



"You should bring your children out here one night. We can have dinner. It would be really nice." Oh, dear.

Just then, M walked in with her partner. The border collie found a new victim and used all its might to reach his face.

"Wow, that dog can jump," M said, while leaning back as far as possible and shielding his face. I'm pretty sure the dog never runs out of energy.

"Mmmhmm," I said. The kitchen-cabinet people laughed. Don't laugh. Control your dang dog!

"Are you ready?" I asked M, jumping up off the couch and heading for the door.

"You wanted a glass of water," the man said to M. Darn it, I thought. Get some water in the car.

"There's water in the car," I said. "It's got ice in it from this morning. It will be freezing."

"That's true, but it's ok," M said. I wanted to burn him with my laser beam eyes. I don't have laser beam eyes, though, so my wants went unrealized.

Before the 5-minute walk to school, which is too much for Mini-Minion. She asks to be carried halfway there. :/

"Oh, it's no trouble," the man said. He picked up a glass of Perrier. I saw it. M did not. I smirked vindictively to myself. We are Americans. We do not drink sparkling water. It tastes like carbonated wrong to us. I smiled sweetly at M as he took the first drink. He glanced at me. So much communication without saying a word. He finished the water, because that's how M is.

As we left, the lady followed us out to the car. She had this look of sad desperation. I'm surprised she didn't pull out a white handkerchief to wave at us as we left. We drove off, and I said to M, "I'm not trying to be weird, but I think she really liked me. She must be terribly lonely."

We got home, and there was an email waiting for me. It said I had hit it off so well with kitchen-cabinet lady and she'd like to invite us for dinner, which would be vegetarian, so we'd have to pick from a menu of various pizzas. He also said to bring the kids because the dog needed new chew toys (ok, he didn't say that) and if we had a VHS, he had some kids videos to sell to us, as well as an old UK television and a gas stove.

I'm buying lots of furniture. It mostly looks like this.

I haven't answered an ad on that English website since.

And the lesson is....never try

I'm tempted to walk through here singing, a la Belle from Beauty and the Beast.

I know, I know...I fail as a casual blogger. I think I've gone over this before. When you spend a huge chunk of your day writing and editing, the last thing you want to do at the end of it is write some more. The ideal end of my day would be rocking in a dark corner somewhere, but that's not working out for me either.

Look! I ripped off all the wallpaper. It still looks gross, though.

And besides, I pretty much so fail as a parent these days, too. Halloween came and went. We saw costumes here, and they had Halloween candy. Why, I'm not sure....because we got a grand total of TWO (yes, that's whopping TWO) trick-or-treating families. Next year, we're having a party. I do have to laugh at the people here who say, "Well, Halloween is such an English thing." No, no, it's not. Halloween was invented by people whose idea of fun involves more than staring at mounted animal heads and discussing William Deerborne-Buckminster's latest fox hunt tally, thankyouverymuch. The English wish they were cool enough to come up with the fantastic fun that is Halloween.

Alex as a zombie. He's really into zombies right now, so he was happy.

I failed so thoroughly at Halloween that I slapped together costumes at about 5pm. Then, we wandered the streets of Confolens for a bit, decided it was completely dead, and then piled up in the car to go for....Chinese food. We brought the kids back to the house and let them knock on the doors of our house, which, to be fair, could easily provide the backdrop to 28 Days Later. My kids have low expectations in life. This makes them easy to please.

Ava as Tiana. Most unoriginal costume ever. I suck.

Ah, but we still had Thanksgiving. I was determined to get a working stove/oven before the 24th. So it was providence that we walked into Carrefour and found this little guy for €150 off (missing timer button). It's not white. Check. It looks retro. Check. I can carry it out of the store and into my kitchen. Check.

I haz oven!

Getting it up our stairs was an adventure. Halfway through, M (who had lost his shoes in the process of moving said oven up the stairs) said to me, "I'm sorry. I think you've actually got the hard end." I think I grunted more than actually formed a coherent response, because I had a large metal appliance pinning my neck against the wall at a not-normal angle.

Alex found a tail-less lizard. It was cause for much excitement.

But we got it up, and I was so happy. Five days before Thanksgiving. We'd have it up and working before then, no problem. M even said our oven was electric (the stovetop is gas), so we just needed to get a plug (they don't sell things with plugs here -- it's very, very strange), and we'd be in business. Turkey, get in mah belly!

The As on Armistice Day.

Our electrician put a plug on it the following Tuesday. He also made vague indications that he was going to hook the gas up to it. I was ready to commit bigamy with this 70-year-old Frenchman with absolutely no sense of humor whatsoever. He didn't connect the gas, and I reconsidered my illegal thoughts. Well, at least we had the oven.

The As even made the Charente Libre blog. :)

M turned the oven on. The house smelled like it was going to burn down. He turned it off. "Oh, by the way," he said casually, "the oven isn't electric. Just the broiler is." The broiler? The broiler?! I don't even know what a broiler's function in life is. "It's no big deal," he continued. "We can just boil a pot of water on the camping stove and put either a chicken or a turkey in there." Or we could not do that, because that sounds absolutely disgusting.

Mini-Minion, her sweet little grubby hands, and her new "friend."

I was still cheerful, though, because we have a microwave/convection oven. Sure, it wasn't going to be great, but it would be ok. One of the apartments we had in Paris only had an oven like that, and I made Thanksgiving dinner on it. It was okay.

All made in a convection microwave oven. Except the drinks. And the plates. And the utensils. Everyone looks happy enough.

The day came, and Mr. A was freaking out over pumpkin pie. So that was the first thing I made. I was so excited to use the gigantic squash I found at the market. I made my own pie crust. It fell on the ground. I should have quit then. I'm stubborn. That's an irritating trait to have. So I kept on my fool's errand.

Meet Stinkytoes. We cannot dissuade her from that name. We call the cat Belle.

The pie was in the oven, and I was sitting downstairs with M, feeling quite full of myself. I am awesome, I thought. The electricity went out and came back on. I walked to the bakery to get a baguette. When I came back, I thought, Gee, that's funny. Why can't I smell pie? That sucks. That's most of the fun of baking a pie anyway. I climbed the stairs, and noticed the oven said 0:00. It's done already? The electrician jumped in front of the doorway, exclaiming, "I'm very sorry. I hope it wasn't ruined." The electricity. It went off. I had a pie in an electric box. That electric box went off when the electricity went off, and it did not come back on. The pie was mostly cooked. Mostly.

Because I am a wicked person, this sign makes my life. I imagine people infested with plague crawling out of their houses.

When I've decided I'm going to be in a good mood, it takes a lot to get me down. (Conversely, if I'm going to be in a bad mood, nothing will change that until I've decided I'm not going to be in a bad mood.) So this pie thing only made a minor dent in my optimism. I had other things to make!

But the kids had to be picked up from school. They were so excited about dinner. We walked inside, and the first words out of the electrician's mouth were: "We have a very serious problem. Very serious. Your wiring is faulty, and it's EDF's responsibility. This is very dangerous and is probably going to start a fire tonight if it's not taken care of immediately. You must call them and have them come NOW."

Out in front of our house. I like it.

I'll spare you the boring 4-hour wait for EDF. We gave the As their mostly cooked pie early. And we ended up at....the Chinese restaurant. It was a fairly quiet dinner. At least our wiring isn't going to kill us in our sleep now. Think positive.

Besides, there's always Christmas.

Are You Really Moving?

1. Yes.

2. No, really. Yes. In 7 days, actually.


In a nutshell, M and I were talking a few months ago, and he said he'd really like to go back to France. We mulled over the idea of moving back to Paris, and I even contacted a few agencies in the city about places in the 11th and 19th. Then I happened to look at rentals in Normandy, and I realized it was possible to get a house (a HOUSE) for €500 a month. It was only a short leap to looking at fixer uppers.

We bought this car. Yes, it's hideous, but it runs well, and until you find a car for £600, mouth = shut.

"Too bad we can't just buy a house," I told M.

Too bad, indeed.

Enter an interesting conversation over a drive back from Scotland with someone who is in the same boat.

Oddly enough, crying children don't make for fun camping trips.

I came home from Scotland and said to M, "Let's try to do this." I think he has just given up on rationality where I'm concerned, so he just sort of shrugged and nodded. I started researching furiously, and came across the Poitou-Charentes region, and a highly recommended estate agency with all sorts of decaying houses. I was sold.

So we planned a trip to the village, Confolens, to look at a few properties. We really didn't know what we were walking into. As it happened, THIS is what we were walking into:


Well. That certainly needs a bit of work. So we kept looking. The third house we viewed needed work. I'm not going to lie. . .it does need a lot of work. But it was fun, and the village was cute, and it's cheap, so why not?

Why not, indeed.

So we put an offer on it. That offer was accepted, we put down our deposit, and the rest will work itself out.

I know you're probably at least mildly curious what we got ourselves into. So, without further ado, the Great Townhouse Wreck of Confolens:

Hint: It's the one with the green "Le Rasoir" shop. That's ours, too!

Not so bad from the outside. . .And the shop is in pretty decent condition. We're going to convert it into a living room/guest room.


The shop area even has its own toilet, which we're going to convert into a bathroom. It, erm, needs a little work. Because right now, it sort of looks like a toilet for dead people.


But that's ok, because there is a fully functioning bathroom upstairs. Isn't it lovely? Just look at that wallpaper!


But the bones are pretty good, and there is a lot of potential.


Alex gets his own room, which is huge. . .


And Ava gets her own room, which is not so huge. . .


They even get their own bathroom, which isn't really much of anything yet.


Best of all. . .we have a gigantic attic! It's going to be a playroom! When it doesn't look like a breeding ground for tetanus, of course.

That's only half of it.

Are we crazy? No, that's silly.

That would be the other half.

For all of this grand luxury, we're paying a total of €200/month, or about $275, including property taxes.

I'm told this is a kitchen. I have my doubts.

Yes, it's a bit random, I guess. I'm sure it seems unexpected. But if you think we're going into this blindly. . .well, then you don't know me very well. ;)

So the third evolution of the never-updated blog is taking place. Now you get to come along as we fix up our house in France and I commute back and forth to London pretty much so once a month (for less than a monthly tube pass). Questions? :)

The One Where M Broke Mr. A's New Bike

For Mr. A's birthday last month, he got a new bike. After continuous comments for the better part of six months about how great a new bike would be, he was beyond excited to have finally gotten what he wanted.

After a few weeks, being able to ride the bike around the courtyard wasn't good enough. He started begging to be able to ride it to school. "How are you going to do that?" I asked. "I can think of a hundred things I'd rather do than run behind your bike, trying to keep up."


"You can get a bike, too," he said. Point taken. And I probably will, but who knows when that will be. Probably late one night in December, when I'm overtaken by some sort of manic urges to buy something. Or next month, when my travel card expires. But we'll see if I feel like riding a bike around then. In any case, I told him I'd think about getting one next month with the money I saved by not buying a travel card.


One morning, M decided to be nice to me by letting me sleep in and taking Mr. A to school. Mini-Minion wasn't having any of that, and she woke up as soon as they walked out the door. So I was curled up on the couch working when M came rushing into the sitting room.


"You're never going to believe what happened," he said. "I was riding Alex's bike back from his school, and--"

"What?" I asked.

He sort of waved me off, as if I had just asked the dumbest question. Of course it's perfectly normal to be riding a child's bike. :/



"I let him ride it to school, and I had to get it home somehow," he said. Or he could have just chained it up and let Alex ride it home later.


"Whatever," he said. "So I was riding by Mortlake Road and Lower Richmond, and I had to get back up on the sidewalk. I lifted up on the handlebars, and I got the bike up, but the handlebars kept coming and lifted completely out of the tube. But I kept going and had nothing to steer with, so it looked like one of those cartoons when they rip the steering wheel out of the car. I almost crashed into the brick wall, but I got my feet down in time. The worst part is, there were two workmen and a long line of cars down Lower Richmond who saw everything."


"I sat back down, but the bike seat was twisted 90 degrees, and I don't even know how that happened," he continued. "When I readjusted the bike and turned it around on the path, the tube inside the tire completely popped, so I had to carry the bike home. I turned to the workers and said, 'Wow, that could have been really bad.' One of them said, 'Yeah, it could have. Mate, I think that's a child's bike, and you're too big for it.'"

Blank stare.


"You broke his bike?" I asked.

"Well, I'll fix it," he said, throwing up his hands and rolling his eyes in response to the terribly offensive suggestion I didn't make.


"Yeah, but you broke his bike because you were popping wheelies on it when you probably shouldn't have been sitting on it at all," I said. "Just a hunch, but I don't think he's going to be thrilled about that."

"It was kind of funny," he said, "because my knees were practically to my chest while I peddled, so I'm sure I looked really stupid anyway."


I scrunched up my nose and turned my head to the side. "Maybe that should have been your first indication that you shouldn't have been riding it, yeah? The handlebars came out? Weren't you the one who put it together? Did you not tighten something?"

"Oh, I'm sure the problem is just that one of their parts sucks," he said. Of course. Totally logical conclusion to draw.


The afternoon came, and I was the one who had to pick up Alex from school. "Where's my bike?" he asked almost immediately. "Why didn't you bring it with you?"


"Ok, Alex," I said, "I'll be honest. Daddy broke your bike, but it's actually a really funny story, and when you hear it, I'm sure you'll think it's hilarious and you won't be mad anymore!" I sort of pumped my fists horizontally in the air to get him superwayjazzed about this fun and exciting story. Yeah! Your bike's broken, but your dad did it in such a stupid way, how can you not laugh?


The fact that in the end he actually did laugh about it should make his father eternally grateful that he has such a chill child.