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.
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.
