I'm back. Not that I'm by any means done cleaning up the big mess that is currently making my life miserable, but I am finally feeling like I don't have to spend every waking moment dealing with it.
Monday morning looked like this:

There was a thick fog that made it impossible to see even a few meters ahead. This made it tricky for the moving truck from Lyon to find our house. But it did.

I'm still not sure whether I am happy or sad that the truck didn't zoom right past our house and on back to Lyon to dump everything in a landfill.
I mean, we lived just fine without this stuff for nearly five months, right?

But then I started unpacking, and there were the photo albums, my sewing machine, my books and all the other things that I truly have been missing and needing.

On the other hand, there is one big problem. Or rather, a small problem: our house. It's too tiny to hold everything. So, we were obliged to leave half of the stuff out in the garage.

This means that J. Lo can't be in the gargage (I'm talking about my new car here, not the popular singer that recently had twins. It would be mean to make a new mom sleep in a garage in the French Alps in the winter, don't you think?)

So, I have been unpacking thousands of books, toys, articles of clothing, etc. All the organising and running up and down three flights of stairs has been exhausting. And the last thing I needed was this:

Three guys with big machines turned up extremely early Wednesday morning and started digging up the driveway. It's loud, it's muddy, it makes the walls vibrate and it's all chez moi.

Even better, yesterday I couldn't get out the door:

To be strictly fair, I have to admit that we asked for it. We have been trying for months to get someone to come and fix the rocky, muddy, deeply rutted lane that we have been very liberally calling "driveway".
So, they finally showed up. Careful what you ask for...

It was supposed to be done by Thurday night, but the Departmental authorities ruined any chance of that. When the digging was all done and the guys had laid down the first truckload of gravel at the street end of the drive, the Departmental jerks came by for a nice visit. They informed us that the driveway entrance had to be ENTIRELY re-done. (it's a long story) And that in turn meant the whole ramp had to be re-graded to avoid it being crazily steep.

Resigned, the guys carefully scraped off all the gravel, set it aside and started digging again. Friday night arrived and it still wasn't all done.

So, the guys will be back Monday morning with their gravel truck and steamroller.

Then maybe when they're done they can help me open and unpack boxes...